Category — NE Seattle

Below are images of Northgate’s Thornton Place (being constructed by Lorig)- it’s scheduled to be completed this year and is located just south of Northgate Mall.

On this space used to be acres of parking which never seemed to ever fill up with cars - but instead would play host to various RV sales, car electronics blow outs, and traveling carnivals.

But soon it will be a southern extension to Northgate Mall and home to many new homes including; 143 retirement residences, 109 condos, and 278 apartments.

It’s being touted as Seattle’s greenest address? And even though I think Squirrelman’s old house may have given that claim a run for it’s money, it’s way greener than anything being built by the mall’s UVillage competitor.

On Monday June 2nd the DPD will hold an early design-review meeting to discuss University Village’s plans to expand its retail space by 25% (100,000 sq feet) and parking by 500 additional spaces (433 according to the North Seattle Herald-Outlook).  

UVillage gives itself credit for being a pedestrian friendly mall - but that pedestrian friendliness is often after you’ve driven there. Because UVillage is located in a less dense area of the city - it relies heavily on car traffic for its customers. And because UVillage is fairly insular - it is really hard to walk from UVillage to neighboring businesses (they actually discourage this by offering to tow your car), no Metro buses actually stop within UVillage proper, and nobody lives within UVillage - the result is that UVillage isn’t really creating a sustainable neighborhood.

I think now is the time for the city to step up and really encourage UVillage to start integrating public transportation into its planning. UVillage could make it easier for riders to pick up buses within the mall - and they could designate part of their Monday - Friday parking as a Park and Ride for NE Seattleites who could then hop on a Metro bus to commute downtown or the Eastside.

And here’s one additional crazy idea - UVillage is the perfect place for condos. Can you imagine? It’d be like living in Celebration, Florida. You’d be living in a security patrolled community that is safely removed from the outside world. During the day you could shop at your favorite stores while at night you could grab your groceries and stroll UVillage’s pleasant walkways. You could even walk to Husky football, basketball and softball games - and hop on the neighboring Burke Gilman bike trail. 

Anyway, it’s not too often that you get a chance to give UVillage some advice, so this early design review meeting is a great opportunity for that. 

UVillage Early Design Review Meeting
6:30pm University Heights Center - 5031 University Way NE
  
  

This NE Seattle house for sale on Redfin deserves a little publicity. It could have easily been torn down and replaced by a mega house, but the developer instead decided to completely restore and update the house. I’ve gotta think that if you live here you’ll automatically be off to a good start with your neighbors.

There’s a nice article in the Times today about Maple Leaf and Prescott Development’s planned Waldo Woods development, congrats to the Maple Leaf folks for getting that press.

I was talking to a developer friend of mine about Waldo Woods and she was saying that the real story here is the high price Camp Fire USA is asking for this property - and that the development Prescott is planning for this property is their attempt at making development pencil out at that price.

So…hopefully Prescott has a contingency on the offer so that if the buildable area on this property is reduced that they can go back to Camp Fire with a lower number and the development still pencils out for Prescott.

Oh, and tonight’s the night for Northgate Urban Center Rezone planning. On a side note, just thinking about the have’s and the have not’s in Seattle - do you ever think the city will ever propose a similiar attempt to create a UVillage Urban Center Rezone? 

Saw this on the Pinehurst Neighborhood blog today, an invitation to submit your neighborhood’s most dangerous intersection photos to his assistant. (Kinda sucks to be that dude - couldn’t your boss have sprung for your web dev to link to a free flickr or Live account?)

You can check out their ‘Critical Crossings’ site here.

Of course, one question I have to ask is, how is this different from the dangerous intersection cataloging work that is being done by the Bridging the Gap process? I wrote about the many worthy projects that were submitted to Bridging the Gap last year but didn’t get approved (there was only $4.5 mil available for $239 mil worth of submitted requests). You can check out the list of neighborhood projects submitted to the city last year.

Of course, you have to keep in mind that SDOT has a very different idea of which intersections are worthy of upgrading vs. the Seattle Police Department. Dave has a nice comment about this, and I’ll post a letter from SDOT explaining why they couldn’t add a lighted crosswalk to the following dangerous intersection.

(Wedgwood intersection in need of help (35th Ave NE and NE 80th). The NE District Council ranked as the NE’s #2 Bridging the Gap priority for 2008. And as someone who catches the bus here - I would agree with that.)