The old duplex is a goner
As the city debates a new growth plan and “Middle Housing” zoning changes that might someday allow a fourplex to rise in Madrona, the site of a 123-year-old, barely 2,000-square-foot house is being prepared to hold 25 new homes on one of the most densely populated blocks of the most densely populated neighborhoods on the West Coast.
Capitol Hill is not complaining — but it is carrying a great deal of the load that has pushed Seattle back into the top 5 for growth in the country’s major cities.
The Bejelit Capitol Hill Cohousing project slated for E Olive St. between Harvard and Boylston is being planned to rise eight stories on 3,312 square feet of land nestled between the massive 1940-built Lenawee apartments building and the smaller but still impressive 1917-built Porter Apartments.
The infill project not substantial enough to trigger the public design review process is a good representation of the state of multifamily housing development on Capitol Hill in 2025.
CHS reported here on the disappearance of construction cranes and design review meetings from the neighborhood as developers have faced a challenging mix of economic conditions and properties that will pencil out as good investments following a hectic decade of growth in the Central Seattle core. There are still a few cranes here and there. More will return as the economic tides shift.
Along E Olive St, the planned eight-story “cohousing” project likely won’t echo the true cohousing, communal ownership model pioneered by the Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing group on 12th Ave but we haven’t heard back from developers on their plans. Renton-based M Power Construction purchased the property for $1,050,000 last October and is working with real estate firm Bejelit to develop the project envisioned for “25 units, a common kitchen on each floor, a lobby/common amenity space on the ground floor, and two stories of underground storage and laundry. +/-25 units, +/- 7,700 SF residential, +/- 2,100 SF common amenity,” plus “a roof deck of +/ 1,160 SF of additional common amenity space.”
Progress and growth will mean the end for the old red house that stands on the land and has stubbornly held its place among the massive brick apartment building walls surrounding it. Demolition permit paperwork has been filed with the city but the old house will get a bit of a reprieve. The demolition project’s status is officially “More Information Requested.” It is only a matter of time — and market and economic conditions — before its old boards are hauled away and 25 new Capitol Hill homes rise in its space.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
Some pretty value-laden terms in this piece: “carrying the load,” “challenging mix,” “massive” buildings.
Why not write about how there will be new neighbors in a walkable neighborhood with plenty of services and how the lot was underserved by having an old single family home on it? That cities change and grow and density supports the environment and economy?
I had a 20 something complain about the constant construction on the Hill since they moved here 4 years ago just the other day. Even younger people are questioning why this neighborhood is getting the vast majority of the density in the city. Density comes with challenges. Challenges that the Hill is struggling with.
my end of the hill (north broadway) has had very little new density in the past 4 years, yet we’ve had more challenges creep in than at any time in the past 20. pls bring me more density of housing and less density of druggies on the sidewalk
Challenges that the Hill voted for.
Half the Hill at best. Are you claiming some kind of mandate like our POS president?
Taking stock in an ignorant 20 something who knows nothing to bolster your argument?
mkaaay
Wonderful stuff, I want to see a hundred more projects just like this
Why? Do I you think co-housing it’s a good idea? No. It might work for the students, but otherwise it will never work. I know, since SF had this idea as well. It doesn’t work. Maybe in some exceptions. And what can happen next, that no one will want that, besides the city of Seattle, who will send there more homeless drug users. It happened with two developments, if not more. One is next to where I’m and police and fire tracks are the regular visitors here. People are so naive sometimes.
Capitol Hill is already overpopulated. Bad thing, in recent time not with the most outstanding citizens. I think Seattle doesn’t have great young people or families who needs a housing in this area. 🤷
How high are you? Like on a scale where 1 is both feet on the ground and 10 is your brain cells all pulling a Hindenburg?
You can be kind of funny occasionally…
Ha!
I have 10 bucks on # 8
I’m laughing but I don’t know why! What or who is #8?
This doesn’t make much sense.
I hate to ask about parking, but I have yet to meet anyone who moves to Seattle with income to afford such housing who doesn’t have a car. So basically 25-30 cars driving endlessly looking for parking outside your house.
Increase on traffic on the roundabouts on the Hill is so bad. People are going down them at 30mph at times. Yes, their are negative consequences to bringing in a bunch of new people to a neighborhood is it a sin to point that out?
Perhaps those people should choose instead one of the many, many, many, many housing alternatives which offer parking spaces.
i’m assuming they park eventually…not sure why this is a problem. if it sucks too much different people will move in and/or these people will pay for a parking spot that already exists somewhere
Plenty. Look at those housing with addicts. They don’t need cars, they just roaming the streets right where they live. And this particular type of housing will ended up the same way. Some non-profit will buy it to place more addicted homeless here. I think Seattle already decided that Capitol Hill will become a dumping place for people like that. No one need a housing for the young professionals, for the young workers, for families or for people with disabilities without a substance abuse problems.
If you hate to bring it up, then why do that yourself? The anwer to your implied question (“but what about parking?”) is that, believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the world who do not own cars and get around by foot, bike, and transit. Really. That’s why developers build buildings without parking — because there’s demand for it.
The most enduring takeaway I have from living in San Francisco (35 years ago!!!) was the ubiquity of multimodal public transit. A bus either on your street or within a couple (Muni). Light rail (Muni). Subways (Muni). Regional rail (BART). After two weeks, I sold my car and never looked back. I n seattle? Not the same story…you still need a car a lot of the time.
I haven’t had a car in 10 years living here.
Didn’t the city put a hold on developing these “apodment”-style buildings? Or did that expire and they’re allowed to be built again?
Sadly, it looks like nobody cares. I know several new build micro apartments, which ended up bought by non-profits or by the city of Seattle to place homeless drug addicts and former criminals as well. What’s happening here is a shame .
They gotta live somewhere, man.
Co-living style units were legalized at the state level in 2023 and the city’s land use code was updated to comply with this law: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1998&Initiative=false&Year=2023
I love the snark in this piece.
Magnolia and Queen Anne and the suburbs need to pick up the load. We should not make Capitol Hill the only place where new people live.
Are “new people” being forced to live in Capitol Hill? Are there no options outside of that neighborhood in which people can live? I’m struggling to understand why you think “new people” can’t choose to live for themselves.
When you don’t build anywhere else in Seattle, new people can’t live there. It’s pretty simple.
Rest of seattle is single family homes, most over $1m. Do you think new people move into those spaces or apartments in cap hill?
The “zoning” on Capitol Hill allows for much “more development” than Queen Anne and Magnolia, so people have fewer choices about where to move to. Isn’t that a fair critique?
Capitol Hill density is what I love about it. Keep building UP here!
Its so ridiculous how we have many empty commercial fronts and many CH denizens are like ‘more people belong in other parts of the city and then drive in to spend money in ours’. They might not flesh it out that much, but how do they seriously think ailing CRE they also bitch about gets helped with these CRE rents, these consumer habits, and this amount of denizens all remaining static?
Crosstown trips from housing not built here…aha, now parking demands make more sense…
Im with ya – more people, more density, more neighbors, more opportunities to connect, more chances to help one another out.
yes! more more more – I’d love to get Capitol Hill up to at least SF Richmond District density, if not one of the actually dense neighborhoods
Aren’t we already denser than SF Richmond? I’ve only been there once but I remember it as kind of Ballard-ish. Lots of single family warbox houses. Could be wrong.
The very densest parts of Capitol Hill max out around 35k and the very densest parts of the Richmond are just over 40k. But…the least dense parts of the Richmond are 25k and the least dense parts of Capitol Hill are under 15k. And there are a LOT more “least dense” parts of Capitol Hill vs the Richmond. Both are MUCH denser than Ballard, which is mostly detached single family homes.
All we ever do here is complain about other neighborhoods not carrying the load while they complain about having to ever carry a load, and nothing really meaningful ever happens anyway.
This city has the civic consciousness completely fucked up by neighborhoodism that will spite itself for so long that it cant do anything on time and gracefully, and thats before we even consider housing as commodity seemingly can only be done by bribing contractors and developers into taking bigger profits, through different offsets and financial vehicles.
I want many many many more new people, bring it on. Of course I’d love other neighborhoods to also have new people, but I don’t see new housing and residents as a “burden” but rather as the best part about a growing city
Anyone remember Emmett Watson?
“most densely populated neighborhoods on the West Coast.”
Eh, not really? it’s not in the top 25 for sure
Wrong & the article is correct
there are at least 25 neighborhoods in san francisco alone more dense than capitol hill
Damn I guess you’re right and I had an outdated understanding https://nathenry.com/writing/2022-11-21-seattle-density.html
Never admit anyone else is ever right! What the hell is wrong with you?
Release a bunch of carbon to pretend you are gods gift to sustainability. Liberalism is cognitive dissonance.
https://web.seattle.gov/DPD/HistoricalSite/QueryResult.aspx?ID=288454087