Two Seattle firms just won awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects!

ASLA announced its 2008 professional awards today.

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol in Chicago

Seattle’s Gustafson Guthrie Nichol won the General Design Award of Excellence, the category’s “best in show,” for its work on the Lurie Garden at Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Seattle’s Paul Broadhurst & Associates was also honored for design of a private garden for a homeowner on San Juan Island.

Jurors commented that Gustafson Guthrie Nichol created an “oasis in the city” with the 3-acre public botanical garden.

“The plant palette is very rich and engaging,” read the juror comments posted on ASLA’s Web site. “It has raised the bar and is far and away the most outstanding example of work submitted to the awards program this year.”

(more…)

National preservation expert Donovan Rypkema is coming to Seattle on May 8.

Donavan Rypkema

Historic Seattle is hosting the lecture as part of its celebration of National Historic Preservation Month in May. Rypkema is recognized as the leader in the economics of preserving historic structures. The lecture will be from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 8 at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd Center at 4649 Sunnyside Avenue N.

The event is co-sponsored by Daniels Development. Tickets cost $15 for Historic Seattle members, $10 for students and $20 for eveybody else.

Rypkema is a principal of PlaceEconomics, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate and economic development-consulting firm that specializes in downtown and neighborhood commercial district revitalization and reuse of historic structures.

Here is an excerpt from a speech Rypkema gave two years ago in Portland, at the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual conference:

“Razing historic buildings results in a triple hit on scarce resources.

First, we are throwing away thousands of dollars of embodied energy. Second, we are replacing it with materials vastly more consumptive of energy. What are most historic houses built from? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber — among the least energy consumptive of materials. What are major components of new buildings? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum – among the most energy consumptive of materials.

Third, recurring embodied energy savings increase dramatically as a building life stretches over fifty years.

You’re a fool or a fraud if you claim to be an environmentalist and yet you throw away historic buildings and their components.”

Thanks to reader suggestions, we’ve made some improvements to the SeattleScape blog.

On the right-hand side of the page, you’ll notice recent real estate sales for King County. This box will feature the biggest sales and will populate itself as new information becomes available. Click on an address to map it with Google Maps, and click on the sale number to see tax records on the property.

A button to link back to the DJC main page has also been added at the top of the blog. The DJC site is limited to subscribers.

Thank you all for reading and contributing to this blog. Please keep the feedback and comments coming.

What would Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé eat at a brown bag lunch?

Find out today. Lappé will join the Seattle City Council for a free brown bag discussion of the city’s Local Action Food Initiative. The brown bag will run from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Friday, April 11) at the second floor council chambers at City Hall at 600 Fourth Ave.

Lappé will also be at an evening discussion of the initiative, running from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.  in the Bertha Knight Landes Room on the ground floor of City Hall.

The Local Food Action Initiative is a council resolution meant to promote local food sustainability and security. It includes measures like finding permanent locations for local farmers markets and for more community gardens, and developing a Food Policy Action Plan.

Council has not yet voted on the plan, sponsored by Council President Richard Conlin. A public hearing of the plan is scheduled for next Wednesday.

More than a 20-year lifespan

Do you know anyone whose career demonstrates “a commitment to the highest standards of responsible development?”

Anyone who deserves another $100,000 to spend?

The Urban Land Institute is seeking submissions for the 2008 J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. The $100,000 prize honors Kansas City developer Jesse Clyde Nichols. He developed Kansas City’s Country Club District, worked on the National Parks and Planning Commission and helped plan Beverly Hills and Cleveland’s Shaker Heights.

The prize was established in 2000. Past winners include architectural historians, mayors, urban planners and real estate developers. None has been from the Pacific Northwest.

Nominations for the 2008 prize are due May 1.

Plans to up-zone South Lake Union to allow taller buildings could move forward with a little help from some outside cash.

The Seattle City Council on Monday approved a bill that lets the city accept up to $300,000 in donations to help pay a consultant to conduct a study and environmental impact statement required for the area rezone. That money could come from public or private sources, according to the bill.

Department of Planning and Development Deputy Director Alan Justad said the city’s action is intended to let the community know that it is accepting outside funding.

“This has been public that we’re looking for money to get this done,” he said.

In 2004, South Lake Union was designated as an urban center to recognize expected growth there. But much of the area is still zoned for lower-density development.

The prospect of getting Amazon.com as a tenant helped Vulcan Inc. get an early two-block up-zone last December.

Council is expected to vote on a neighborhood up-zone next year.

When I was little, downtown Seattle was the only real “downtown” I knew.

Sure, neighboring cities and suburbs had great shopping corridors. But downtown Seattle was the obvious option if you wanted to walk elbow to elbow with strangers, put a dollar in a street musician’s cap or people watch.

Now, it seems that all of Seattle’s suburbs and surrounding areas are racing to revitalize or create downtowns of their own. It’s a natural progression of development for some areas and, for others, a return to an abandoned Main Street.

In many Puget Sound cities, there is a calculated effort to create a corridor that mimics a town square more than a mall. Upzones, developer incentives and property tax forgiveness programs taken on by cities like Federal Way are aimed at seducing people into moving in near shops and transit.

Some of these plans make me think of Sim City. Not the one where you scan the terra cotta landscape before you plunk down your power station. This is the Sim City where you take an existing city and need to rearrange the squares to stimulate the economy or cut pollution or get Godzilla to leave town.

Is there a magic formula for germinating a vibrant downtown? It seems like priority one around here is getting those residences built. If cities up-zone the blocks next to existing transit corridors and shops, and provide developer incentives to build, will the rest just fall into place?

A training next month in Wenatchee, the self-named apple capitol of the world, will focus on downtown revitalization. It’s sponsored by CTED and the Washington State Main Street Program. Sessions include topics like “the case for art,” “seven components of a healthy downtown,” and “are we too small to revitalize our downtown?” Godzilla isn’t mentioned by name, but there is a session called “when Hollywood comes to town.”

There will also be a tour of converted buildings in Wenatchee’s warehouse district and an awards banquet honoring the state’s best downtown revitalization projects.

Some bus drivers on the No. 11 route call out the stop closest to the Washington Park Arboretum with the eerie signifier “Lake Washington Boulevard, Tree Museum.”

Some might think that’s just a Joni Mitchell reference, but there’s been a lot of scary talk lately about Seattle’s dwindling tree population.

According to the city, Seattle’s tree canopy has shrunk from 40 percent city coverage in the late 1970s to around 18 percent right now. Last year, the mayor said the city should take steps to address the shrinking canopy, getting back to 30 percent coverage by 2037.

DPD is rewriting the city’s tree regulations to try to reach the target. A comp plan amendment proposed by Ilze Jones of Jones and Jones Architects and Landscape Architects would have the city set aside 48,000 acres and name a tree czar to manage city trees.

While we’re waiting for the laws to be sorted out, and with Washington’s Arbor Day coming up on Tuesday, some people might want to roll up their sleeves and take advantage of an annual freebie from the city.

The Department of Neighborhoods is accepting applications from Seattle residents for free trees. But you have to talk to your neighbors and plant the trees yourselves. Groups of five households or more on a street or block are eligible to apply, and can request between 10 and 40 trees.

In exchange for free trees delivered by the city this fall, the groups must attend a training session and then plant the trees. Applications are due on Friday, August 15.

Get an application by calling the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods at (206) 684-0464 or Click here.

Just don’t charge a dollar and a half to see ‘em.

Click here for more stats and links on Seattle tree.

There’s a yellowed and fading cardboard hand at King Street Station that instructs vistitors to look up at a tiny exposed patch of original ceiling and imagine the restoration that will “soon” be underway there. Well, that wizened little hand might finally be right.

The city of Seattle bought the historic landmark from BNSF Railway last month for $10 (You’re reading that right- originally they agreed on $1 but neither the city nor the railroad could process so small a check) and is now looking for a project manager to lead a $30.5 million design and renovation of the 102-year-old building.

First up: replacing the leaky glazed tile roof. Work will also include seismic reinforcement, clock face repairs, and restoration of the exterior and the waiting area.

Statements of Qualifications for project managers are due by 4 p.m. April 11. That’s next Friday.

The project manager is expected to earn between $400,000 and $550,000 with the project running until December 2011.

Click here to get the RFQ packet, or call 800-833-6388. Questions? Call SDOT project manager Trevina Wang at (206) 684-3072 or e-mail her. The notice ran in the DJC on March 26 and 28.

Sugimura

City planners are talking to downtown area developers, businesses and others to gauge interest in helping build a public school in the heart of the city. Department of Planning and Development Director Diane Sugimura said having a school downtown, in South Lake Union or Belltown could help convince families to keep living in the city center after their kids reach school age.

“As we look at how do you make Center City more family-friendly, and how do you get more families down here, people always say a school,” Sugimura said.

But the school district won’t be able to afford land in those areas, she said.

DPD has been talking to interested neighborhood groups in Belltown for the past year about the school. Recently, Sugimura said, developers from Belltown and South Lake Union have asked DPD about incentives to include a school in a project.

There’s one incentive already on the books: excluding certain square footage from Floor Area Ratio calculations. Excluding school square footage from calculations would let a developer build bigger if they include a school. That tool was used to encourage downtown department store development decades ago.

What about an FAR bonus? Like the ones developers get for including affordable housing in their plans? Sugimura said that’s a possibility, but it would need council and mayoral approval.

(more…)