Category — Downtown

Trolls in Seattle don’t just live under the Fremont bridge, they’re thriving within the reader comments section of the Seattle PI. In this case, PI visitors aren’t showing any sympathy for Mosler condo owners who are caught in the middle of a nasty legal fight between the Mosler’s developer and contractor (oh yeah, and if that’s not enough, there’s a seperate suit between the developer and a neighboring business - Kroll Map Co.).

The Mosler’s contractor feels they are owned $6.7 million for the project, and so they filed a lien against the developer. And what this means for the condo owners is that they’re stuck in a financial limbo because the lien basically prevents them from selling their units.

Coming on the heels of a King County rural landowners property rights decision by the state yesterday (whose regulations to prevent land clearing were designed to help prevent sprawl), it’s kind of ironic that these condo owners (who by living in a multi-family building like this are actually helping prevent sprawl) are facing an even more restrictive property rights situation than their rural counterparts.

But beyond the pain these Mosler homeowners face, the additional harm this situation creates is that it helps reinforce the idea that multi-family ownership is less secure, less protected, and less valued than single-family ownership - and that’s a shame - because multi-family good development like the Mosler should be protected and encouraged.

It would be nice if the city spent as much time lobbying for the rights of multi-family citizens (this also includes protecting their rights to sunlight and privacy) as they are into reducing grocery store bags. Because as long as doubts about their rights as multi-family home owners linger, single family home ownership is going to be most peoples’ Plan A.
The Mosler Lofts - nicely designed, but tied down by legal questions.

No reason for posting this other than I thought it was an interesting picture, and that back in 1919 when this picture was taken it was Seattle’s oldest standing house.  (Yeah, I’d have knocked it down too). It is pretty cool though to see that the Rainier club and First Methodist Church are still around.  

The new Four Seasons embraces west towards Puget Sound. 

And returns an uninspiring flat wall back towards 1st Avenue (Four Seasons is on the right).

I really wasn’t expecting much at first when I opened up the architect’s presentation and the first thing I saw was a definition of the word ‘metronatural‘ that the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau created last year to help promote the city. Personally, I thought something like ‘Nice, but passive-aggressive’ or ‘You really won’t believe what your rental car taxes are paying for’ would have been better slogans but I guess that’s why I’m not a copywriter.

Anyway, once I was able to put that behind me, I went through the presentation and was impressed by the way that the developers are thinking about how this property can enhance the character of the Denny Triangle while also adding something of economic value to the city.

The two things I liked right away were:

- The developers are striving for LEED platinum certification.
- For each of the three massing options they’re presenting, they explain the impact it will have on pedestrian activity and traffic.

Of course, I’m not sure how this will impact the residents of the apartment buildings on this block but I’ve got to think it will be less intensive for them than the Greyhound station that is currently there.

You can download the building’s entire Early Design Review presentation here.

Massing Option 3 tower design

 Massing Option 3 street level designs

This story is really disturbing. First, the city rezones the Denny Triangle to reduce spacing between an existing condo building and a proposed office building in the Denny Triangle from 60 to 18 feet, next, it upzones the planned office building from 13 to 34 stories, and finally - after the Cosmopolitan condominium is notified of this change by the city it communicates none of this to its future residents who will be moving into the condo.

The Cosmo Seattle web site is doing a great job of digging into this situation, detailing how this happened and making sure this issue doesn’t just go away. In fact, they’re still waiting for the mayor to respond to this letter signed by over 70 people .

This story was featured on KIRO news on Monday and the station put together a nice piece about the situation. However, one part that made me roll my eyes was when KIRO interviewed one city employee who explained the situation by using a ‘density is good for the environment’ argument to sugar coat over what really was a ‘we made a bad decision that flies right in the face of our goals for creating a livable downtown’.

Anyway, the moral of the story is don’t expect condo developers downtown to share important information like this with you, the city isn’t doing a good job protecting downtown condo owners from hasty zoning changes, and in order to protect their interests downtown condo owners need to get organized and have their voices heard.  

Two downtown high-rise design reviews are happening tonight at city hall (room L280).

Note to Escala owners, might want to check out the 1913 5th Ave review since this will be your new neighbor.

1823 Minor Avenue - 5:30pm start

1913 5th Avenue - 7:00pm start

Pretty cool design for downtown Fifth and Columbia building. It’s refreshing to see so much thought and care going into a building’s design by ‘paying homage to its neighbors‘.

(Image from the Seattle Times)