Demolition season continues around Capitol Hill. Here is the apocalyptic scene currently underway where First Hill meets Capitol Hill and the 16-story Whole Foods mixed-use apartment building is slated to rise.
Crews have spent the week tearing down the 1928-built, three-story masonry medical building at the tri-corner of Harvard, Broadway, and Madison. They have plenty more to go. The work at the corner is heavy with the smell of mildewy dust and the satisfying thuds of large vehicles of destruction laying waste to decades-old infrastructure.
Unlike two other major demolitions wrapping up on the Hill, the removal of the brick building at Broadway and Madison didn’t provide many opportunities for reclamation and revealed no charming hints of the area’s auto row past. But recycling and reuse is underway. The rest is landfill.
Coming soon
By 2018, 265 residential units will rise above and 358 parking spaces will sink below a giant, nearly 50,000 square foot, two-story Whole Foods market. The First Hill Streetcar line will pass directly by, and First Hill’s hospitals and Seattle University will be the project’s neighbors.
Build, build! Keep building! The more wealthy people to mock the better.
or don’t build and watch housing in the city core become even more scarce and expensive. either way, something to bitch about. amiright?
Or don’t build, and restrict the supply of housing. That always causes prices to go down!
Not.
Oops, Zeepleoop’s comment hadn’t shown up on my screen when I wrote mine. Great minds, thinking alike, etc.
Just think of all that character lost! (This is what you nimbys sound like, always)
I will never understand the logic behind zoning for 16 stories at a location like this and yet restricting the buildings right on top of the Capitol Hill light rail station to less than half that.
I’m guessing that it’s because First Hill is historically more of a high-rise neighborhood than the area by Cal Anderson. Why do you think the light-rail station should be so much denser?
@JB
“Why do you think the light-rail station should be so much denser?”
because the light rail station is literally a major transit hub. build dense around the station so you can ease off on the increased 3-4 story buildings in single family neighborhoods.
also, the argument that one neighborhood has historically been one way while another hasn’t is a poor excuse for bad city planning and not thinking about the future. san francisco is a prime example of that kind of flawed thinking.