Tag Archives: design review

Design review: Eight stories, mass timber, and within view of Capitol Hill Station

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(Image: CHS)

Revived redevelopment plans for a new project that will demolish E Olive Way’s All Seasons Cleaners will come in front of the East Design Review Board this week a vision for an eight-story mass timber building within sight of the Capitol Hill Station entrance.

The building at 1800 E Olive Way, the corner of Olive and Harvard a block west of Broadway, is home to one of the remaining dry cleaners on the Hill. Back in 2018, the then-busy drive thru laundry and home to one of the Hill’s busiest little weekend flea markets was being lined up for a project that would have risen seven stories and created around 45 apartments, and 3,200 square feet of retail just off Broadway — but longtime business and property owners the Kim family opted not to sell, putting any redevelopment on hold.

Four years later following the pandemic, the opening of hundreds of new apartments above Capitol Hill Station nearby, and an important land use change, plans are back in motion for a building that can now rise eight stories thanks to the new Mandatory Housing Affordability zoning. Continue reading →

Seattle makes plans to sustain hybrid virtual and in-person design review meetings

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The Seattle City Council is working on legislation that would allow important land use meetings including public design review sessions to be held virtually and in-person as the official state of emergency around COVID-19 is lifted.

“The proposal would allow SDCI and Office of Housing to hold meetings in a modern, convenient manner, with an option for the public to attend a virtual meeting at a physical meeting venue for people who don’t have access to a computer or prefer an in-person meeting,” the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections director’s report and recommendation on the proposal reads. Continue reading →

Design review: With ‘quirkiness’ and trees on the table, eight stories proposed at 13th and John

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The concept for 13th and John

Part of the new wave of eight-story — and smaller —  projects coming to the E Olive Way-E John corridor

Capitol Hill’s East John-East Olive Way corridor continues to fill with redevelopment including an eight-story 13th Ave E project slated to come before the East Design Review Board later this week.

The board will also be considering a proposal for neighbors in Eastlake that will replace a commercial strip home to a grocery market and restaurants with a new six-story apartment building.

Nearly a year after its first go-round, a plan to bring an 8-story, 49 unit building to 13th Ave E will come before the board. The proposal, which had its first design review meeting last October, is proposed by G2 Development and designed by Skidmore Janette.

The site is at 131 13th Ave E., just south of the corner of East John. On the block currently are a mix of single-family and multi-family homes. The proposal calls for tearing down an existing two-story building and detached garage. The structure was built as a single-family home in 1912, but has since been carved up into three apartments. The 1903-built single family home on the corner would remain in place and neighbor the new project. Continue reading →

With eight stories, brick veneer, and preserving an ‘exceptional’ birch tree, development plans rise again across from Broadway Hill Park

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(Images: Grouparchitect)

A plan to bring new development to the corner of E Republican and Federal Ave E neighboring the area’s mix of single family-style homes and old apartment buildings stalled during the pandemic, but now it’s coming back and will appear before the East Design Review Board this week.

Three existing homes, each dating to the first years of the 20th century, will be demolished. According to tax records, two of the three are single family homes, while the third is a duplex. In a trade a city desperate for new housing should be happy to make, an eight-story, 75-unit building will rise across from Broadway Hill Park.

In the works for years, developers began meeting with the Pike Pine Urban Neighborhood Council in November 2019. There were more community outreach meetings in November of that year and in January 2020. Then 2020 happened. There was another, email evaluation by Pike Pine Urban Neighborhood Council. There was some movement later in 2020, but then things seems to have stalled. That earlier version had called for a 117-unit building, but there’s no longer any mention of that number.

And now, it’s back in the building pipeline with a recently released plan for design review (PDF). Continue reading →

With rezone still on the table, 23rd and Cherry’s ‘Afrofuturist’ Acer House project faces final step in design review

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The latest design rendering for Acer House (Via @benmaritz)

It will still require the Seattle City Council’s blessing on a proposed rezone of its corner but the Acer House project, a planned five and a half-story, Afrofuturist design development at 23rd and Cherry, could complete the city’s design review process this week.

A meeting for the final “recommendation” phase is scheduled for Thursday night in front of the Central Area Design Review Board. Continue reading →

What will the Capitol Hill Safeway redevelopment look like? Public design review process begins this week

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UPDATE: The developers say the look and feel of planned retail along 15th Ave E could echo this facade from the Hawkins building in Portland (Image: Weber Thompson)

The developer’s preferred massing proposal for the project — UPDATE: Yes, they’ve incorrectly labeled E Thomas as E John (Image: Weber Thompson)

In keeping with Capitol Hill development, an old, single-story building will be torn down and replaced with a five-story building of residential over retail.

This time around, the Safeway at 15th Ave E and E John is up, and early plans for what will replace the store will come before the East Design Review Board this week.

The new project will replace the existing 44,000-square-foot Safeway and its adjacent surface parking lot. The Safeway was built in 1998 and as of 2021, had an appraised value of $39.48 million, according to county tax records.

In its place, developer Greystar and architect Weber Thompson propose a new, 50,000-square-foot Safeway, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail locations and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars, according to the design review proposal.

1410 E John St

Design Review Early Design Guidance for 2, 5-story buildings, with a total of 400 apartment units and retail. Parking for 350 vehicles proposed. View Design Proposal  (55 MB)    

Review Meeting
February 9, 2022 5:00 pm

Meeting: https://bit.ly/Mtg3038145

Listen Line: 206-207-1700 Passcode: 2480 613 8372
Comment Sign Up: https://bit.ly/Comment3038145
Review Phase
EDG–Early Design Guidance  

Project Number

Planner
Abby Weber — Learn more about commenting — add your comments here.

The project is coming to a neighborhood suffering a bit of big grocery anxiety. Kroger chose to shut down the nearby 15th Ave E QFC last April in a tiff over the city’s hazard pay requirements and the company continues to hold a lease on that property. With the Ohio-based Kroger apparently uninterested in striking a deal to allow a competitor to use the building, efforts continue to find a Kroger-friendly tenant capable of filling the large space.

By the time the 15th and John Safeway needs to be demolished, hopefully the nearby QFC space will be back in motion with a new grocery store.

The 98,700-square-foot lot is a sort of lopsided square, with a stem sticking up where it touches E Thomas. The existing buildings including the Aquarian Foundation church on the block that are not Safeway will remain as they are.

The design
The developer has proposed three different options, and all three propose activating what is now a long, boring blank wall – that mirrored glass isn’t fooling anybody – along 15th. Continue reading →

Tall(er), affordable, and with a streamlined Seattle process, YouthCare Academy part of next wave of Broadway redevelopment

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A rendering of the planned YouthCare Academy at Broadway and Pine

The next wave of major redevelopment to sweep across Broadway will be the stuff of urbanist dreams.

Relatively tall.

Affordable.

And with a minimized, streamlined version of Seattle process to pass through.

This week, plans for an eight-story, 84-unit housing project at the heart of Broadway and Pine will be reviewed by administrators with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. The publicly-financed affordable development will move forward without the slower, more expensive public design review process under emergency rules passed in spring of 2020 to help keep design and landmark reviews on track during the pandemic restrictions.

The plans appear worthy of the rush. Part of the YouthCare South Annex project at Broadway and Pine. Community Roots Housing is leading the development to create eight stories of affordable housing and a homeless youth “education and employment academy” in this core of Capitol Hill. The project is expecting to serve 250 to 300 individuals ages 18 to 24 per year at the training academy. Plans call for an “adaptive reuse” project to overhaul and upgrade the existing structures including the historic Booth Building that will remain two to three stories along E Pine and Broadway. The affordable housing apartment building is planned to rise eight stories on the site of the current surface parking lot.

The large Booth Building at the corner and the smaller E.H. Hamlin Building had been part of Seattle Central’s South Annex facility. Community Roots purchased the property from the school to develop the project with YouthCare.
Continue reading →

Seattle for Everyone points at new ‘efficient, consistent, and predictable’ direction for city’s inefficient, inconsistent, and unpredictable design review process

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The Broadway face of the new mixed-use development above Capitol Hill Station

By Lilli DeLeon, UW News Lab/Special to CHS

As Seattle continues to grow, the city’s neighborhoods have adapted for more development, greater diversity, and higher density. Yet as neighborhood organizations and local committees continue to work at having a say in the kind of development that is proposed, the process of providing community input and guiding how that development will look has increasingly come into question.

In 2015, the Seattle for Everyone coalition was instrumental in advocating for what we now know as Mandatory Housing Affordability which provides much-needed affordable units in new developments, while also offering development incentives by allowing more units to be developed on a given lot.

The group describes itself as a broad coalition of affordable housing developers and advocates, consisting of “for-profit developers and businesses, labor and social justice advocates, environmentalists, urbanists, and neighbors.”

More recently, this group has turned its focus toward changing the way the design review process happens in Seattle. Continue reading →

Design review: Filling in 13th Ave with eight stories at John, four below E Howell

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Skidmore Janette character sketch for a project planned for the corner of 13th and John

A pair of development proposals about a quarter-mile away from each other on Capitol Hill’s 13th Ave will add a few dozen new housing units to the neighborhood and are making their way through the city’s design review process, though only one of them will appear before the East Design Review Board.

131 13th Ave E
A proposed project on 13th Ave E near the intersection with E John will come before the board Wednesday night in the body’s ongoing virtual review sessions.

On the block currently are a mix of single-family and multi-family homes. The proposal calls for tearing down an existing two-story building and detached garage. The structure was built as a single-family home in 1912, but has since been carved up into three apartments. The 1903-built home on the corner would remain in place and neighbor the new project.

Developer G2 Development proposes an eight-story building, with room for 46-48 units, depending on which development option goes forward. None of the options include any parking for cars. The development is just up John from busy Capitol Hill Station. Continue reading →

A short walk from Capitol Hill Station, 11th Ave E project would trade nine units for 60

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More than 60 new households could be coming to 11th Ave E in the next few years on Capitol Hill. C&A Development is proposing to replace a three-story, nine-unit building with an eight-story, 70-unit building as the neighborhood two blocks north of Cal Anderson Park and a block from Capitol Hill Station continues to increase in density. Wednesday night, the project will begin the city’s design review process.

228 11th Ave E

Design Review Early Design Guidance for an 8-story, 73- unit apartment building. No parking proposed. View Design Proposal  (56 MB)    

Review Meeting
July 14, 2021 5:00 PM

Meeting: https://bit.ly/Mtg3037728

Listen Line: 206-207-1700 Passcode: 187 844 2252
Comment Sign Up: https://bit.ly/Comment3037728
Review Phase
EDG–Early Design Guidance

Project Number

Planner
Theresa Neylon — Email comments: [email protected]

The site is 228 11th Ave E, between East John and East Thomas streets. The area is generally home to two-and three-story buildings, with a few single-family houses peppered in. But with an 80-foot height limit allowed under current zoning, projects like this one are likely to reshape the area over time. The project site is just a few blocks away from another big project, the coming redevelopment of the Safeway on 15th and John.

The existing building dates to 1963. It and its small parking lot will both be removed. Continue reading →