Category — South Lake Union

Got a copy of a press release from Vulcan announcing the opening of their Borealis Apartments today.

The 33,000-square-foot, six-story building includes 53 apartments with studios, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units ranging from 400 – 850 square feet. About 3,600 square feet of retail space will also be located on the ground floor.

As defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2008 median incomes for 80 percent are $43,050 or less for a one-person household and $61,500 or less for a four-person household. Rents at Borealis Apartments will start at $875 for a studio, $1,052 for a one-bedroom and $1,244 for a two-bedroom unit.

According to the Borealis web site, each apartment includes:

Washer/Dryer in each unit
Built in Microwave
Garbage disposal
Large windows
Natural light

This new blog about South Lake Union could be a winner, they’ve got a cool looking logo and I like how they mix commentary with news and info about the neighborhood. Check out TheSouthLake.

Watching the SLUT pass by - Take 2, originally uploaded by J_H_P and posted on TheSouthLake.

6:30pm tonight at the Queen Anne Community Center the Design Review Board will meet to review an early design proposal for this portion of Amazon’s new headquarters. 

I was down at the South Lake Union Discovery Center today checking out all the displays about the upcoming South Lake Union redevelopment and had a thought, “what if the city spent as much time thinking about neighborhood development in other neighborhoods throughout Seattle as it is doing in South Lake Union?”

I have a feeling that if the city did spend time carefully looking at developing neighborhoods as a whole instead of piecemeal, I don’t think you’d see bad development like we’re seeing in:

• The Denny Triangle neighborhood, where the city is permitting a high-rise to be built just 16 feet away from a neighboring residential high-rise?!? This kind of close-in high-rise development has not been successful in any major city and is terrible urban planning. 
• The Pinehurst neighborhood (North Seattle) where Kohary Construction has pretty much ticked off the neighborhood by using a loophole to avoid the DPD’s Design Review Process and using this lack of review to build dull, characterless townhomes that push most of their development’s traffic issues into the surrounding neighborhood.
• Wedgwood (again in North Seattle) where Murray Franklyn wants to build a huge mixed commercial/residential property that is only 8 feet away from single family homes and is going to really screw up traffic on 35th Ave NE.
• Summit and Belmont on Capitol Hill where Murray Franklyn is planning to put in a less than dynamic mixed use building leased out to even duller tenants.
• Dearborn Street just south of downtown where there are plans to build a major shopping complex, which the neighborhood feels will have a devestating Walmart effect on their neighborhood businesses.

Anyway, this is just a list of problem developments I’ve learned about while working on this blog, and I’m sure there are many more out there. Perhaps what we need is the DPD to put together a ‘South Lake Union Discovery Center’ that covers the entire city and lets us think about development holistically. Or perhaps what we need is a mayor or city council to realize that this is the major issue facing Seattle neighborhoods.

Alright, I thought Microsoft might be moving into the new Enso building - which would be good for Enso since it is being built on spec (which means built without a signed tenant). However, things aren’t bad at all for South Lake Union and Vulcan since Microsoft is going to occupy 100,000 square feet in Vulcan’s Westlake/Terry building just down the street.

Today Microsoft will announce that it is to lease the office portion of Vulcan’s Enso property on South Lake Union. This is a good announcement from the fact that it establishes a major new employer downtown and could possibly help reduce the commutes of numerous Seattlites who trek over 520 to Redmond each day.