hugeasscity

[ Rendering of the Bernard Apartments ]

Inspired by The Seattle Condo Blog’s summary of new and proposed development around Denny Way west of I-5, I thought I’d take a crack at doing the math:

Hyatt Place Hotel and Apartments (Denny and 6th): 160 hotel + 56 apt.
Borealis Apartments: (Denny and Dexter) 53 units
Taylor 28 (Denny and Taylor): 197 units + retail
Marselle Condominium (115 Aurora Ave): 132 units
ICON Tower (Denny/6th/Wall): 224 units
Mirabella: (Denny and Fairview) 500 units (senior housing)
1200 Stewart: 300 units + retail
2200 Westlake (Denny and Westlake): 160 hotel + 261 condo + retail
Enso (Denny and Westlake): 135 units
Rollin Street Flats (Denny and Westlake): 208 units
Trio: (Denny and Western): 116 units
Bernard Apartments (Denny and Warren): 62 units
Expo62 (2nd and John): 116 units

Grand total: 2680 units.

And that’s not including housing projects within two or three blocks of Denny including Alley 24, Stewart and Minor, 1823 Minor, Cosmo, Mosler Lofts, Insignia, Gallery, and probably others that I’m missing, as well as commercial projects.  Not to mention neighborhood projects that have not yet been proposed — the City projects 16,000 new jobs and 8,000 new homes by 2024 in South Lake Union alone.  

First point:  From the perspective of sustainable development, these projects are great news for the City.  The Denny Triangle and South Lake Union have been highly underutilized and are superbly located.

Now, regarding the inauspicious fate of Denny Way:  Taking into account that all of the projects listed above have more parking stalls than units, and that many of them include retail, as a wild-ass guess we’re probably talking about at least 2000, maybe 3000 (or more?) vehicles hitting Denny Way every day.

Denny Way is central Seattle’s most important east-west route. And already it is backed up all too often. Is future gridlock not assured? Adding lanes to Denny Way is pretty much out of the question.

Gordon Price, the former mayor of Vancouver, BC, is known for his quip “congestion is your friend.” By this he means that only when travel by car becomes painful enough will people seriously consider alternatives. Apparently Seattle has a hankering to test his theory.

Looks like a pleasant place for a promenade, no? What fun to push a stroller around that streetlight pole as oncoming traffic rushes past an arms-reach away.

Oh, how exhilarating to feel the wind in your face as a bus roars by so close you could reach out and touch it.

Or for an exciting variation, try walking with your back to the traffic, and see if you can keep yourself from flinching each time a car screams up from behind you.

This is 23rd Ave in the Central District, between Spring and Marion, about the suckiest pedestrian street you could imagine.

The root problem is simple: the 23rd Ave right of way (ROW) is too narrow, and it should never have been made into a four lane arterial. The ROW on this section of 23rd Ave is only 60 feet, which, with four 12-foot travel lanes, leaves only six feet for sidewalk on each side. There’s no room for a planting strip, and if a tree is put in, it ends up blocking half the sidewalk.

For comparison, even the side streets such as Marion have a wider ROW at 65 feet, with eight feet of planting strip between the sidewalk and the curb. Martin Luther King Way is 85 feet wide, and has only two travel lanes.

Because walking along 23rd is a such a totally miserable experience, very few people do it, street life is dead, and 23rd is like a black hole cutting across the neighborhood. Pedestrian-oriented businesses fail. And street environments that repel pedestrians have a tendency to become havens for street crime — it is no coincidence that 23rd and Union, as well as 23rd and Cherry and other areas further south on 23rd Ave have had troubled histories.

Given that 23rd Ave is one of Seattle’s most important north-south arterials, and because at most transportation agencies reducing car capacity is sacrilege, I was astounded to learn that Seattle’s new Bike Master Plan proposes bike lanes on 23rd Ave, south of Madison. The only way bike lanes will fit on 23rd is if two motor vehicle travel lanes are removed, a so-called “road diet.”

Bikes lanes on 23rd are justifiable purely from the perspective of sustainable and balanced transportation. But a road diet would also be great medicine for the community around 23rd Ave by vastly improving the pedestrian realm and thereby catalyzing neighborhood revitalization. The power of streetscape improvements to spawn revitalization should not be underestimated, and a great example is just 11 blocks west of 23rd on 12th Ave between Madison and Cherry.

Dropping 23rd Ave to two travel lanes will reduce its maximum car capacity. But there are many other two-lane arterials in Seattle that handle the same traffic load as 23rd, Broadway being one example (see traffic counts here).

Still, I am highly skeptical that the City will follow through with the recommendation for bike lanes on 23rd, even though this recommendation was published by the City’s own department of transportation. And even though the City is trying to become more balanced in its transportation priorities. And even though we live in one of the most progressive cities in the country, the truth is most Seattlites are still inclined to give car capacity highest priority.

I have been in touch with the City regarding how and when the final decision will be made on bike lanes on 23rd Ave bike lanes, and will post when new info becomes available.

[ Seattle City Hall is LEED Gold Certified, though its energy performance is not stellar. Photo: Dan Bertolet ]

On Tuesday, Mayor Greg Nickels delivered his annual “State of the City” speech, during which he touted his intention “to make Seattle America’s green building capital.” And here’s the plan: appoint a panel to develop a strategy to reduce building energy use by 20%.

Meanwhile, two Los Angeles City Council Committees just voted (registration required, or see also here) to adopt an ordinance requiring all new construction over 50,000 square feet to meet the LEED Silver green building standard. And yes, that includes privately owned buildings. The ordinance is expected to become official through a full City Council vote in a month or so.  Lots of U.S. cities, including Seattle, now have LEED requirements for public buildings, but mandating LEED for private buildings is another story.  Boston and Washington D.C. are the only major U.S. cities that have currently have green building code that regulates private development.

LEED ratings apply not only to energy, but also to water, site, indoor environmental quality, recycled content, and construction waste. Data collected on completed buildings has shown that LEED-certified buildings are on average 25 to 30% more energy efficient than standard buildings.

The ordinance that L.A. is adopting is likely based on the new ASHRAE 189 Green Building Standard, which is essentially a formal codification of LEED Silver. Well, it turns out that none other than John Hogan, Senior Energy Analyst for the City of Seattle, is the chair of the ASHRAE Standard 189 Project Committee.

So then, I suppose one might be tempted to ask: If Seattle hopes to be a leader in green building, does it really make sense for us to wait around for the appointment of a new panel, and then to wait for them to develop their strategies, and then to wait some more for the City to figure out if and how to implement those strategies?  We have the expertise and we have the public support.  What we don’t have is the time for the glacial pace of the “Seattle Process.”

As I have written before, at this point in our history, allowing the construction of  buildings that have not been designed for maxiumum energy efficiency is as irresponsible as sacrificing transit for new freeway lanes.

[ Image courtesy J. Shea ]

[ Image: Darick Chamberlin ]

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“noise isn’t noise”

This is Grace Architects proposal to integrate the Ballard Denny’s into the new project. No joke. And some of our “respectable” news outlets have been eating it right up, following today’s decision by the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board to give the Denny’s building landmark status. No joke.

My solution is clearly superior: Far more elegant, and no 125′ rezone required.

[ Looking north on MLK Blvd; Photo: Dan Bertolet ]

This doesn’t look like the Seattle that I know. But drive a couple minutes south down MLK Blvd from where it crosses Rainier Ave and this is what you’ll find: development that actually makes sense for the 21st Century.

The buildings are part of Rainier Vista, an affordable housing development that will eventually include 850 homes for a range of low-income levels, along with 250 to 350 market-rate homes. The Edmonds Light Rail Station is at the development’s doorstep.

[ Photo: Dan Bertolet ]

The buildings have been hatched from several different architect/developer teams, so there is a welcome diversity of styles. Color was encouraged, so as to avoid the relatively monotone look of New Holley, another Seattle Housing Authority development further south on MLK Blvd.

[ Photo: Dan Bertolet ]

Rainier Vista has many key pieces of the sustainability puzzle: density, open space, diversity, affordability, and transit. What’s missing are cutting-edge energy and water strategies. And real density. If this site was in Vancouver BC it would have 20-story towers.

[ Photo: Ballard News Tribune ]

The old QFC on 24th is gone, torn down to make way for a 400 unit Condo Complex. Right now the site is an ever deepening hole, making way for the required parking. Now I know the transformation of Ballard into the yuppie projects is supposed to be seen as some sort of “progress” that would make Paul Schell proud, but this is really an issue of infrastructure. Guess what, the streets are not likely able to handle the traffic from the SEVERAL multi-hundred units currently under construction up and down Market St. Market is bad enough during rush hour. I’m having a hard time imagining the addition of 1500 to 2000 more vehicles trying to get out of Ballard each morning when the streets are clogged right now. I’m glad I’m able to walk to work and only need worry about being almost run over by those all to time pressed to stop talking while driving.

In the end, it is not a people density issue, it is a automobile density issue. Its perfectly reasonable to increase population density as long as people can still get to where they need to be every day to maintain the urban economy that we all depend on. You can’t simply road build your way out of the problem in a place like the Seattle area. The geography is all to restricting with a terribly inconvenient mix of hills and water, a point made obvious to anyone capable of reading a standard 7.5′ series USGS map. Arizona style sprawl just can’t happen here. If Tim Eyman understood one tiny molecule of regional geography he’d probably still be a watch repairman.

The solution was discovered quite some time ago in the form of reliable, public transportation. Yes we have geographical limitations to that as well, but the current system can only be improved. Yes I used to live in London and I’m a spoiled brat on that subject., but even by much lower standards what we’ve got now is a joke. And despite the best intentions of it’s creators, the last ten years trying to get a rail line from the U district to the Airport could end up as transportationally relevant as the current monorail.

Yup, I’m a southend snob, and will do anything to avoid crossing the ship canal. But see below for evidence that I’ve been up there: pics of new and newish multifamily housing that I came across semi-randomly. I don’t have too much to say about these other than it all makes me very sleepy.

Granted, it’s a big challenge to bring high-quality and/or innovative design to market rate housing — the economic equation invariably favors stripping out any details that aren’t critical to keeping the building from falling down (“value engineering”). Mediocre is good enough. But these buildings will be defining the character of our neighborhoods and the image of our city for decades to come. We need to do better.

The Helix Apartments, 12th and 50th in the U-District. This is the best of the bunch, solid design, though nothing about it really stands out from dozens of other similar projects in Seattle. And no, it isn’t two separate buildings, but the designers hope you will think it is.

Right across the street from Helix on 12th, the Ellipse Apartments, with units fronting the street that would appear to be live-work. Not sure why, but something about it vaguely reminds me of Florida. Dig those circular concrete columns poking up through the post-tensioned (PT) slab.

A block south of the two projects shown above, Acacia Court, at 12th and 47th, designed with students in mind (i.e. small units). Those are some serious pot balconies (pot as in flower). Alas, nary a pot to be seen.

This is Dwell Roosevelt, condos at 65th and 11th in the Roosevelt District. I like its simple forms, but something about the mirrored symmetry and the 2nd story brick feels clunky to me.

The Varsity II Apartments, at 65th and 23rd in Ravenna. Sigh. The retirement home vibe, but with bigger balconies. Weird how they let the thick gray PT slab punch through the brickwork.

Fini Condos at 68th and Greenwood on Phinney Ridge. I don’t get it. What is this thing trying to be? My, what big green eyebrows you have!

Name That Year in US History: The President of the United States is being accused of starting a War on false pretenses. The President precipitates the War – believing that the military will prevail easily – but claims publicly that the enemy provoked the hostilities. The opposition party supports the War at first, and continues to support the funding of the troops, but eventually comes to oppose the War, and, finally, a prominent Senator in the Opposition directly accuses the President of initiating the violence. Then an unknown, freshman congressman, also of the opposition (Whigs) from Illinois (Lincoln himself!) rails against the President, challenging him to prove that he has not lied to the American people. The speech is widely published, but wins him no friends.

Of course, nothing comes of this controversy, and the Mexican War is concluded in glorious victory, Texas is annexed as War booty, and, not One, but Two Mexican War veterans would eventually become President, while Mr. Lincoln accomplished nothing except putting his career at risk and, so quits the Congress the next year to enter a political quasi-retirement.

The year: 1847. The President: Polk.

Of course, the whole thing was a land-grab. At a time when land-grabbing was political red meat. Good Stuff. If today’s Iraq can be seen as an Oil-grab, then I suppose it’s not unlikely that permanent bases can be accomplished for the same reason. It can be equated with National Security and Well Being.

File Under: The Ends Justify the Means.

Happy Presidents Day!

The City has recently embarked on a year-long process to do what so obviously needs to be done in South Lake Union: upzone. Last December, keeping Amazon in town was deemed important enough to ram through the upzone of two blocks for 160-foot buildings. But for a neighborhood-wide rezone, a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is required.

As the zoning map above shows, allowed building heights drop precipitously once you move north across Denny Way and enter SLU (border in light blue). With the exception of the narrow strip of SM-125 along Denny, the allowed heights in SLU are roughly comparable to Seattle urban villages such Ballard.

But SLU is not your typical Seattle urban village. It’s on downtown’s doorstep. It’s hemmed in by Seattle’s two major north-south roadways, on the east by I-5, and on the west by Highway 99. It’s highly urbanized and packed with commercial and industrial uses, but has relatively little residential (though that’s been increasing in recent years). To the north it borders some low-rise residential zones, but it doesn’t come close to any of our sacred single-family zones.

Furthermore, SLU is in a valley, lessening the impact that tall buildings have on the viewsheds from surrounding areas. And let’s not forget that we just paid for a new streetcar through the neighborhood that needs lots more density to justify its existence.

There is no other neighborhood outside of downtown where upzoning is such a no-brainer. That is not to say these changes would have no downside: Change is impossible without disruption. Lack of affordable housing and loss of commerical and industrial uses are the two main risks. But given the current state of the world, this risk doesn’t justify halting densification. Our challenge is to find a way to increase density while preserving what we value.

So far the City has held an urban form charette, during which a set of development scenarios (big pdf) were defined in order to provide a basis for the EIS. The image below illustrates the “Parks Focus” option, wherein the densest development is clustered around Lake Union Park and Denny Park. Building forms have been simplified to three typologies: 65–85′ “breadloafs,” 125–160′ “wedding cakes,” and 240–400′ towers. Note that with no upzone, we would end up with a district of breadloafs, similar in massing to the Alley 24 buildings across the street from REI.

It is certain that the task of determining the optimum zoning arrangement will be both complex and controversial. But let’s not be timid, as in, why not upzone the whole damn thing up to 400 feet? Cause Planet Earth is jonesin for a fix of smarter urban development.

[Rendering of proposed 6-story mixed-use building at 23rd and Union]

I sent this email to the Central Neighborhood Association Group email list. Reposting here as I think the comments are very relevant. (Go here and here for info on the proposed development at 2203 East Union. Design Review is scheduled for March 5, 8:00pm at Seattle Central Community College.)

The Safeway building is anti-life and anti-community. It’s essentially a big underground parking lot with a car centric grocery store. There is no commercial business on either arterial (On 23rd there is a big brick wall. I guess Madison does have the Starbucks). The Safeway building is hideous looking and its not surprising that it did nothing to help the issues on 22nd and Madison.

Contrast this with the building the Jim Mueller is proposing. The overall designs that he has shown in the design reviews I’ve attended appear to be attractive. His preferred design features small/medium sized retail on both union and 23rd which will do much to increase desirable foot traffic in the neighborhood. He has also expressed interest in actively courting local business to fill the retail space.

I think we’d be fools to discourage this development. We live 20 minutes by foot from downtown Seattle, a major US city, six stories is just not that tall. Lets be happy that this developer is putting effort into a well designed building. If this project gets killed I’m sure we’ll just get stuck with another four story grocery store.

This 9-unit condo building at East Pine and Summit is a good example of how infill development can be done with minimal impact on neighborhood character (unlike the project soon to rise one block to the east). Tucked in behind a classic old storefront and an auto repair shop, it has no direct access to either Pine or Summit. I went past it dozens of times on Pine Street before I noticed it. Good stuff designed by Runberg, who we’ll be soon be seeing a lot more of up the street.

[Illustrations of “green matrix” and “the human scale” in Mumford’s The City in History, published in 1961]

He had a pretty good one, Mr. Mumford did. Here, from The City in History, is his reaction to the sprawling, car-dependent development that was already well under way 50 years ago:

“By building up sub-centers, based on pedestrian circulation, within the metropolitan region, a good part of urban transportation difficulties could have been obviated. To make the necessary journeys about the metropolis swift and efficient the number of unnecessary journeys–and the amount of their unnecessary length–must be decreased. Only by bringing work and home closer together can this be achieved.”

Nearly fifty years later, these ideas are finally seeping into mainstream consciousness.

And here’s Mumford going off on the new federal highway system in 1958, from The Urban Prospect:

“When the American people, through their Congress, voted last year for a twenty-six billion dollar highway program, the most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they hadn’t the faintest notion of what they were doing. Within the next fifteen years they will doubtless find out; but by that time it will be too late to correct all the damage to our cities and our countryside, to say nothing of the efficient organization of industry and transportation, that this ill-conceived and absurdly unbalanced program will have wrought.

“Yet if someone had foretold these consequences before this vast sum of money was pushed through Congress, under the specious guise of a national defense measure, it is doubtful whether our countrymen would have listened long enough to understand; or would even have been able to change their minds if they did understand. For the current American way of life is founded not just on motor transportation but on the religion of the motor car, and the sacrifices that people are prepared to make for the religion stand outside the realm of rational criticism. Perhaps the only thing that could bring Americans to their senses would be a clear demonstration of the fact that their highway program will, eventually, wipe out the very area of freedom that the private motorcar promised to retain for them.

“As long as motorcars were few in number, he who had one was king: he could go where he pleased and halt where he pleased; and this machine itself appeared as a compensatory device for enlarging an ego which had been shrunken by our very success in mechanization. That sense of freedom and power remains a fact today only in low density areas, in the open country; the popularity of this method of escape has ruined the promise it once held forth. In using the car to flee from the metropolis the motorist finds that he has merely transferred congestion to the highway; and when he reaches his destination, in a distant suburb, he finds that the countryside he sought has disappeared: beyond him, thanks to the motorway, lies only another suburb, just as dull as his own. To have a minimum amount of communication and sociability in this spread-out life, his wife becomes a taxi driver by daily occupation, and the amount of money it costs to keep this whole system running leaves him with shamefully overcrowded, understaffed schools, inadequate police, poorly serviced hospitals, underspaced recreation areas, ill-supported libraries.

“In short, the American has sacrificed his life as a whole to the motorcar, like someone who, demented with passion, wrecks his home in order to lavish his income on a capricious mistress who promises delights he can only occasionally enjoy.”

And so on. Same as it ever was, but worse.

If you’re still with me, here’s one more to show that Mumford’s crystal ball was not pure gloom and doom, a glimmer of hope from near the end of The City in History (keep in mind the context of 1961):

“But happily life has one predictable attribute: it is full of surprises. At the last moment–and our generation may in fact be close to the last moment–the purposes and projects that will redeem our present aimless dynamism may gain the upper hand. When that happens, obstacles that now seem insuperable will melt away; and the vast sums of money and energy, the massive efforts of science and technics, which now go into the building of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and a hundred other cunning devices directly or indirectly attached to dehumanized and demoralized goals, will be released for the recultivation of the earth and the rebuilding of cities: above all, for the replenishment of the human personality. If once the sterile dreams and sadistic nightmares that obsess the ruling elite are banished, there will be such a release of human vitality as will make the Renascence seem almost a stillbirth.”

Seattle architecture is uninspired. But don’t take it from me. The jurors at the last annual meeting of the Seattle Chapter of the American Institute of Architects said so.

Yet other culturally similar cities get the goods. What gives?

Below is a sampling of housing designed by San Francisco architecture firm David Baker + Partners. These people are form givers. They don’t try to pretend that a box is not a box. Many of their projects are affordable housing, but somehow they still manage to produce interesting design on a tight budget.

Cars are like wombs. Inside, you’re safe and warm, practically in the fetal position as the seat envelops you firmly yet comfortably. As you travel, the white noise and the swaying and jiggling closely mimic the experience of a fetus in the womb. This is why a car ride will put a baby to sleep when all else fails. It is well established that fussy infants can be calmed with a combination of snug wrapping, gentle jiggling, and white noise (this is likely the origin of “ssshhh”). Researchers believe that a fetus in the womb, because it is immersed in liquid, is constantly hearing a sound roughly equivalent to a vacuum cleaner.

I think the womb-like aura of cars helps explain how oblivious so many people are when they get behind the wheel of a car. They behave as if nothing bad could ever happen, even though the statistics say otherwise. It’s as if they’re thinking, oh, I don’t need to pay attention, everything will be fine, oh, I’ll take this call on my cell phone even though I know it will distract me, cause nothing can make me feel bad here in my womb.

Many people don’t seem to think it’s worth spending a little time to actually learn how to drive well — as if there’s some subconscious voice whispering, “no need to exert any effort, mommy-car will take care of everything.” This attitude is totally reinforced by our lax licensing requirements and lax traffic violation enforcement. Why is it so common to see someone struggling to parallel park? Normally, a person who lacked a skill important to everyday life would make the effort to get it figured out.

Or why do I so often come across this scene: a driver wants to take a right turn and there’s clearly enough room for them to fit through to the right of a line of stopped cars, but they just sort of half pull over and stop at the end of the line. They have no concept of the spatial extent of the machine they are controlling. One might expect a person would take driving seriously enough to get a better handle on this. But when you consider the car as a womb, that attitude starts to make sense. Is there a better explanation for why, in a culture that is so dependent on cars, are there so many shitty drivers? I’m listening…

This lack of taking driving seriously is even more astounding in light of how it not only impacts something relatively intangible like safety, but it also increases congestion. All people hate traffic, but the spell of the car-womb seems to overpower any motivation to reduce congestion by simply being better a driver. The quintessential example: Why, I am begging someone to explain to me, do so many drivers not use turn signals? (This question is so rich it’s going to get it’s own chapter someday.)

The womb-like nature of cars also contributes to, I suspect, the aggressive behavior of many drivers. Could all those raised middle fingers simply be a manifestation of the uncontrollable negative emotions people feel when sanctity of their car-womb is violated? Babies have tantrums because their brains have not yet developed the neural pathways that allow the frontal cortex to suppress the raw mammalian emotions. Perhaps a womb-like environment encourages a regression back to this infantile state. But surely, whatever the cause, infantile rightly applies to way too many car drivers out there.

Am I thinking too hard about all this? Definitely.

This post is part of a series; see also Chapter 1 and Chapter 37.

Well on it’s way to 440 feet, this is 1521 2nd Ave: 38-stories, 143 luxury condo units, designed by Weber Thompson, developed by (can you guess?) Opus. It will be the tallest residential tower in Seattle, and is targeting LEED Silver certification in order to qualify for a height bonus under the City’s new downtown zoning.

It’s great to see Seattle’s new downtown zoning come to fruition in a high-density residential tower. Though, because of the luxury units with large floor areas and tall ceilings, the density is not as high as it could be. I suspect that raising the density of luxury condo units was not Steinbrueck’s primary motive for working so hard on the downtown zoning updates.

The project has been touted as Seattle’s first “tall-skinny” tower, but that’s a bit of stretch. The parcel is roughly 150 by 110 feet, and the tower footprint isn’t all that much smaller — it must be at least 10,000 square feet. There is no strict definition of a “point tower,” but most would probably agree it should be on the order of 7,000 to 8,000 square feet, or perhaps even less.

Furthermore, it would be ideal if the tower was rotated 90 degrees so that it’s wider dimension was parallel rather than perpendicular to the western water and mountain views. The new WaMu tower at 1st and Union is a particulary egregious example of this fault. Unfortunately much Seattle’s street grid has long, north-south oriented blocks which encourage a north-south building orientation. Vancouver, BC is known for arranging its towers to maximize views between and around towers.

Two more tidbits to stimulate your deep thoughts:

1. What’s up with those columns of four-panel windows running up the facade that look like something you’d find on a seventies suburban house (Anderson windows!)? Are they temporary? Are they there to satisfy a LEED operable window point? They totally stand out from the rest of the slick glass facade. Weird.

2. Is this thing beating up on Pike Market? Does it clash, or does it bring a welcome new dynamic to the area? Does anyone care?

This is the six-story, 117-unit mixed-use project in the works for the vacant lot on the NE corner of 14th and East Union on Capitol Hill. Designed by the Runberg Architecture Group, and overall, I like what I see. Or perhaps I should also say I like what I don’t see, namely, a heavy brick base and hodgepodge of facade styles and materials.

Just two blocks south at 12th and Union, Runberg is designing another six-story mixed-use building, shown above in a concept massing. It’s looking pretty ambitious, with its angled cutaways and cantilevered corners supported by exposed columns. Triangular parcels are good fun.

But dang, I’ll miss the Color Store. I probably have a couple dozen partially used paint cans in my basement that were custom mixed by the stern owner of that shop. And yes, it will be sad to see the Under Arms go, not only for the stellar name, but also because the neighborhood will lose much needed housing diversity (read: affordable housing).

The 12th and Pike area has a rich built environment that has recently seen some great additions to the fabric (see here, here, and here). The two projects shown above would appear to have the potential to keep up that momentum.

Hell yes, this is coming to Federal Way, WA, a bedroom community of about 86,000 people located between Seattle and Tacoma. Part of the City’s downtown redevelopment strategy, the project consists of four towers from 16 to 24 stories on a 4-acre site, with a whopping total of 900 residential units, along with 60,000 square feet of retail, commercial, and office space.

Project price tag: $250 million. Land cost: only $6 million. This ain’t Seattle.

The architect is Vancouver, BC-based VIA Suzuki, though these clearly are not to be slender Vancouver-style point towers.

The project includes a one-acre public park. If you look closely at the rendering, you can see that the park is elevated about 15 to 20 feet above the street, no doubt because it is sitting atop the concrete slab of the parking bunkers below. The press releases don’t mention how many parking stalls will be in the project, but it’s got to be something on the order of a couple thousand. So it’s no surprise that some of the parking is above grade. Unfortunately, elevating a park tends to isolate it from the street. And then there’s that humongous blank wall along the lower edge of the project. Yet another example of how the accommodation of cars leads to bad urban design.

But enough whining about the details. What an amazing thing, this density coming to a relatively small city. This is a growth management success story that should help ease some troubled minds. Housing at such a high density at this location would never have happened without growth management. Federal Way is probably satisfying its entire population growth target in this one project. And as a result, likely hundreds of sprawling new homes will not be built.