(Image: CHS)
The new shape of plans at 14th and Union (Image: CHS)
Capitol Hill’s golden age of the auto row passed long ago. Now, any plans for expansion of the final, fancy vestige of the neighborhood’s car retailing community has been thrust aside by Capitol Hill’s everlasting growth industry: new apartments.
Plans for redevelopment of the former distillery and restaurant at the corner of 14th and Union will now push through the block and onto E Madison with a new land deal for the 1920-built Talbot Building garage, CHS has learned.
The agreed acquisition will allow Euclid Development and Capitol Hill-based architects Board and Vellum to expand the planned seven-story development from an 80-unit building at 14th and Union to one that now jigsaws into the block with 136 apartment units above mixed-use commercial and an underground parking lot.
“We will wrap around the Diesel and Chop Suey,” T.J. Lehman of Euclid tells CHS, adding that the planned mixed-use Euclid Union will be built to help make sure the lives of residents mix well with the popular nightlife spots below.
“People don’t rent at the corner of 14th and Union and want suburbs,” Lehman said. “If they want a gated community they live somewhere else.”
Learn more at 1314eunion.com (Image: Euclid Union)
CHS reported here last May on the original plans for the development to rise and replace the buildings formerly home to Oola Distillery, gay bar Union, Restaurant Zoe, and Bar Sue.
The new agreement to acquire and develop the old Talbot Building garage as part of the project will scuttle plans to create a new car dealership on the E Madison property sandwiched between Chop Suey and the Madison Pub. In 2018, CHS reported on early plans from 12th Ave’s Ferrari and Maserati of Seattle to expand onto E Madison with a new a new Alfa Romeo Seattle showroom and sales offices in the overhauled garage. The dealership purchased the 15,000 square-foot garage for $2.25 million.
Euclid Union will go through the city’s design review process beginning later this year. In the meantime, the developers are presenting plans to neighbors and community groups. This week, the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council will host a discussion of the project that is planned for Tuesday night beginning at 6 PM. Contact and learn more about the group here.
Lehman said the hope is for the project to break ground in late summer of 2023.
You can also learn more about the project and add your early feedback at 1314eunion.com.
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I’m going to miss old Seattle. New Seattle, sanitized for your protection.
I think old Seattle is just people saying that.
I live one block east of this building. There already is too much traffic here and this is going to make it much, much worse!
How dare people move to the neighborhood I moved to?!?
A lot of the traffic in this area is caused by SAAS, which for some reason is allowed to completely tie up traffic during the morning and afternoon as a parade of luxury cars drop off/pick up their charges. In the afternoons, parents park in the turning lane up Union for up to 3 blocks until the off duty cop lets them swing onto 13th. The public sidewalks around the block is also treated like private property by their students.
That aside, construction of this behemoth plus the Community Roots building across the street is going to make this intersection a nightmare. Glad I don’t drive.
How dare parents of children use the road and children have the nerve to use the sidewalks. They don’t even drive the cars I like!
you are really not getting my point. They aren’t just driving and walking – public roads and walkways are being used as private property by a private school, making it difficult for regular car and pedestrian traffic flow.
Also – I moved to this neighborhood (in a multi-family building) because it was a unique mix of single family homes, older apartment buildings, rental houses (lots of SU students), and a lot of low-income housing. Very diverse, and neighborly. It’s not that people are moving in that is a bummer, it’s that the new development is mostly geared toward a higher income demographic that so far has been a lot less interested in their community. It’s ok to lament that loss while understanding that Seattle needs more housing.
You’re complaining that the street corner with Diesel and Chop Suey, a block from Pony is going to get loud and busy?
Did you just move to Seattle during the Pandemic? 😂
? Did you mean to reply to someone else? I never said anything about the area getting “loud and busy”. I’ve lived in Capitol Hill a long, long time. Never had a problem with Pony, Chop Suey, or other nightlife.
Board and Vellum is a Capitol Hill based architecture firm, who are very vocal and involved with the community. I would bet that they make a building that is more in line with what the neighborhood wants and needs.
Just what that intersection needs! More residential units in the middle of a block full of nightlife and all complaining, “OMG! It’s so noisy here! I’m calling the cops!”
Why would we be spending so much money, $168 million(?), on the Madison bus rapid transit line if we weren’t going to place more residential units along this critical transportation artery? This development is exactly what needs to happen to justify the ungodly projected cost and near term inconvenience of that project. If developers can’t build along Madison without taking crap, where can they build?
They can build wherever they want if it’s not near genevieve and Michael Strangeways.
Cool. I like the idea of more housing and retail rather than a car dealership.