Tag Archives: e olive st

While Seattle debates ‘Middle Housing,’ this 8-story project will fill in another Capitol Hill block

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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. Continue reading →

A decade later, checking in on what comes next for a Capitol Hill development once at the center of the Seattle debate over microhousing

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Thanks for the questions in the CHS Facebook Group about the changes at the property

An East Capitol Hill apartment development that became a centerpoint in Seattle’s early debates over microhousing has had an interesting decade and what comes next might say a little about the tiny apartment units and the industry that created them.

Neighbors around 17th Ave E and E Olive St. began asking questions about the twin apartment buildings last month as plywood went up and the property was fenced off.

A decade ago, neighbors and anti-growth advocates cited the 1720 E Olive St. congregate housing project as an example that the city wasn’t doing enough to limit microhousing — especially near areas of single family-style housing and complained that the buildings were poorly made and that the tiny living spaces would become undesirable to residents.

The 60 units across the two buildings at 17th and Olive average 138 square feet apiece, according to King County records. Continue reading →