NE 120th between Lake City and 35th Ave NE - Density without the investment.
Lots of apartment and condo buildings here (and even a few nicely designed ones tucked in here and there), but walking around this part of north Seattle, I just couldn’t find where the city has invested in building a neighborhood for these people?
North of NE 120th St in the area between Lake City Way and 35th Ave NE there are blocks and blocks of streets like these. There are very few sidewalks, corner stores, or parks. The place is packed with cars on the street, the gravel areas in front of the buildings are so worn down by traffic that they are give way to mudholes during the lightest rain, and good luck walking around as you dodge the cars that cut through here to get from Lake City to 35th Ave.
Forget the design of these buildings, but is this kind of urban planning what we mean by a sustainable urban village/neighborhood?
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You have hit on a significant issue that impacts nearly all areas in the north and south ends of Seattle. There are many areas that have been taking on density and that have full communities without safe pedestrian infrastructure.
Many of these communities have seniors in large senior housing complexes that are on streets without sidewalks or crosswalks. These seniors (many who no longer drive) need to walk in the street to get to bus stops and grocery stores.
And, these communities have children without safe routes to school. Children walk on arterial streets that have curb areas that are often are flooded when it rains.
There is not money to fund all of the projects that are needed. The Neighborhood Street Fund and Bridging the Gap programs are great - but they are not even beginning to address the needs in the north and south ends of the city. Also, the new Sidewalk requirements (http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Planning/Sidewalks_Improvement_Initiative/Overview/) is a good step, but again, it is not enough especially for areas such as this which are already built out.
One last thought is that Lake City is concerned with the environmental impact of impermeable surfaces. When thinking about sidewalks and draininge, it is also good to look at the work being done in Seattle with natural drainage systems - http://www.seattle.gov/util/About_SPU/Drainage_&_Sewer_System/Natural_Drainage_Systems/Natural_Drainage_Overview/SPU_001802.asp
I wonder how many of these pictures have to be shown to convince people the City is violating the Growth Management Act by not obeying the concurrency rules embedded everywhere in that document.
The reason they call it “concurrency” instead of “whenever the hell we get around to it” was the authors of the GMA understood blinding adding density without accompanying it with infrastructure would be a counterproductive disaster.
This is a great topic — by coincidence, one of these projects is mine — 12050 33rd Ave NE (the orange and green building, second one down in your photos). Come back in a month or two and you will see full frontage improvements at this site — amazingly, the city has run us through the ringer over how and what to do on the alley side of this project, which holds up our ability to do the street frontage. All the units are sold and our buyers are being very patient. A block north, at 12316 33rd NE, we’re done with the frontage and it looks great. But both of these projects will be orphaned as the only ones on the block with improvements. Since we did our sites (which are six units each), the DPD has decreased the limit for requiring frontage to three units. But it’s still a poorly implemented system. Mayor Nickels stood on this street six months ago and had a press conference on the issue, where he announced the lowered threshold for imposing the improvement requirement on builders (we brought the mayor’s office into our conversation with DPD to expedite the process at this orange building).
A better solution would be to just go ahead and have the city do the entire frontage on these close in neighborhoods (NE 123rd b/w LCW and 35th NE would be natural, as would 32nd and 33rd). Then stick the developers with a latecomers fee as their properties get developed. Then the neighborhood gets done in a coherent manner, probably for lower overall cost. Much more efficient.
If these areas north of 85th had been part of Seattle originally (rather than being later annexed) they would have all been intelligently developed like those in-city ‘hoods like Ravenna, Greenlake, etc.
[...] I have an easy solution for this, take away the Alki funding, and give it to an area that wants and needs [...]
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