(Image: Runberg Architecture Group)
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Last week, the eight-story, 134-unit project from Mack Real Estate and Runberg Architecture Group for the land currently occupied by the former Car Tender auto shop, Bergman’s Lock and Key, and the old Scratch Deli building won final approval from the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections director.
CHS reported here on the project’s successful final design review last summer as the development garnered support from pro-housing advocates and residents providing public comment and overcame criticism over its height, bulk, and scale and its relationship to the surrounding streets that mix new apartment buildings like 12th Ave Arts, older buildings, duplexes and triplexes, and the occasional single family style home.
As is typical, the SDCI director approval is conditional and the developers must agree to meet design and environmental guidelines, produce a safe construction plan, and stick to recommendations made by the review board last summer including designing “additional pedestrian amenities and particularly seating to encourage active use at the street edges,” retaining “the lush and vibrant landscape elements shown on the alley podium including the large caliper trees,” and “maintain the appearance of the project” in the proposed design renderings.
The signoff now moves the 12th Ave at E Olive St project forward toward a start of construction in coming months.
Meanwhile, critics who spoke against the bulk and scale of the 12th Ave project had better brace themselves for development efforts that still have Seattle’s design and land use process to get through.
CHS reported Monday on early plans from San Francisco-based developers Carmel Partners and Seattle-based Neiman Taber Architects to piece together a puzzle of $1 million-plus parcels making space for a new eight-story, nearly 300-unit apartment complex on the block of E Denny between 10th and 11th Ave just north of Cal Anderson and across the street from the hundreds of new apartment units and new mixed-use development above Capitol Hill Station.
The 10th Ave project joins expanded plans for a new mixed-use development at 14th and Union through the block and onto E Madison that will see its planned unit count climb from 80 to 136 and, at 15th and John, the project to redevelop the neighborhood’s Safeway property will top out at only five stories but spread out across the block with two new buildings including a 50,000-square-foot grocery, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail spaces, and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars.
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Bergmann’s Lock and Key: please stay in the neighborhood. You’ve been helping me ever since you were up on 15th (with a train in the window at Christmas). Please continue to provide us with speedy, efficient, helpful service.