Some are making lemonade from the housing bust’s lemons. The New York Times had an interesting story today on cities buying up foreclosed property to prevent blight from seeping into their towns. Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego and others are busy buying up land with public and private dollars, then redeveloping and flipping it.

Housing bust not a bad deal for all

On Morning Edition the story this morning was the “green lining” on the cloud of bad housing news. Nature and land trusts have taken advantage of falling prices and foreclosures to get good deals on properties or areas they plan to turn into open space and preserves, including a significant stretch of coastline on Oahu that will be turned into a wildlife preserve.

And, if you haven’t yet heard through the grapevine, two very non-serious new news sources have hit the Seattle media. One is about (supposedly) ugly condos, the other is Seattle’s own Onionesque fake news site, the Naked Loon that touches on development, politics and just how silly it is to be a Seattleite.

Seven mature trees along the Burke-Gilman trail were likely injected with herbicide and are dead or dying, Seattle Parks and Recreation announced this morning in a press release.

Staff on a routine maintenance visit found three silver poplars and four Douglas Firs along the trail at NE 77th St. had quarter-inch holes drilled into them, and the speed of their death suggests they were likely injected with herbicide.

It's not easy being green

The three poplars are already dead, two of the Douglas firs are dead, and the other two are starting to turn brown.

Parks staff have submitted a police report and said in the release that the crime could be prosecuted under the State Malicious Mischief statute or under the Timber Trespass Statute. Anyone with information is asked to call the Seattle Police Department at 206-625-5011.

The trees are valued at $40,000 to $60,000 and it will take up to 30 years for replacement trees to reach maturity.

My DJC colleague Lynn Porter reported today that the Carroll’s Fine Jewelry clock that has been on Fourth Avenue near Pike Street since 1913 could make a move to MOHAI.

Carrolls Clock photo courtesy of MOHAI

Carroll’s closed this Spring. The Carroll family has donated the two-ton freestanding cast iron timepiece to the Museum of History & Industry.

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation board will weigh in on the landmark’s move at its Aug. 6 meeting.

Eight other Seattle street clocks are also designated city landmarks. They include the Ben Bridge jewelry store clock at the Fourth and Pike Building and the Greenwood Jewelers clock on North 85th Street.

Read more at DJC.com

Transfers of Development Rights are not new. In 1916, New York City planners zoned the city and included a provision letting owners sell their building rights to neighboring lots. In the 1960s, they changed the law so lots didn’t have to be next to each other to TDR-swap.

Thanks for the development rights

In downtown Seattle, the owners of older, landmarked buildings get money for selling their development rights, and downtown developers buy those rights to build bigger on other sites.

King County also has a TDR program that lets developers in areas targeted for growth buy development rights from rural landowners. Vulcan took advantage of that program in 2005, purchasing 19 private TDRs to build 40,000 more square feet at Westlake/Terry. The county’s TDR program sunsets this month.

Now, the Seattle City Council is considering expanding Seattle’s program to other areas of the city. Proponents like former council aide Roger Valdez say other neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and First Hill are also seeing rapid growth and the TDR program will help the city hold on to some of the older buildings that might otherwise get razed.

The Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee could discuss the idea at its meeting at 9:30 a.m. this Wednesday.

The committee will also talk about raising allowed building heights in Interbay and South Downtown, and about extending the developer incentive program, where developers get to build higher if they build or pay for affordable units.

Former council staffer Roger Valdez wrote an interesting column on growth and change in today’s P-I.

Growth is coming, Valdez says; lots of it. So how do we accommodate all these new people, their new houses and cars and needs, without losing all of our Sunset Bowls, Chubby and Tubbys, all of our views of Mt. Rainier and Lake Union, all of our Seattleness? Is that even possible?

Not your grandmother's Seattle anymore

Valdez says the city would be wise to expand the Transfer of Development Rights program throughout the city so owners of landmark properties could make money, developers could keep building high and we could all hold on to a more diverse cityscape.

That’s an idea council has been kicking around for the past few months, but legislation hasn’t yet been discussed.

He also recommends developer incentives for preserving existing uses, aimed at earmarking some space for the arts, cultural and community spaces that are being pushed out with rising rents and skyrocketing development potential.

Valdez says increasing the type of uses we protect is a good way to protect uses that don’t really “pencil out” but add to the city’s bottom line.

In some cases, Valdez said, the city could even forgo the code and let neighborhoods and developers work together to create innovative projects that fit better with neighborhoods and protect the uses we value.

I’m not sure I really see developers and neighbors joining hands on many projects. But as our region aggressively plans for growth, people like Valdez suggest that more mitigation measures are needed to make sure we don’t change entirely.

In-city density is planning’s penicillin for sprawl. Nobody wants sprawl, but how do we know when we’ve gotten too aggressive with our treatment?

Heather MacIntosh, president of D.C.-based lobbying group Preservation Action, will be back in her old stomping grounds tonight for a lecture on grassroots advocacy.

The lecture starts at 5:30 p.m. tonight (July 1) at the First United Methodist Church Sanctuary at 811 Fifth Ave. It’s free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by Daniels Development.

MacIntosh was a preservation advocate for Historic Seattle and was deputy director of Historylink. org, the online encyclopedia of Seattle and Washington history.

A master plan for London’s Battersea Power Station reads like a utopian post-industrialist fantasy and a developer’s dream: a power plant reborn as dense community center by 2020.

It’s a non-local story of adaptive reuse that should result in an interesting addition to London’s skyline.

Beyond Pink Floyd

The power plant itself (you may know it from Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover) will serve as more than art deco centerpiece, with a new biofuel-powered co-generation plant in its basement sending water vapor through the 1933 plant’s chimneys. Other buildings of the plant will be converted to offices.

A transparent solar canopy will cover some of its buildings and plazas and, combined with an “eco-chimney,” will reduce the need for air conditioning.

The master plan, conceived by Rafael Vinoly Architects and Real Estate Opportunities Ltd., also features luxury apartments, a waterpark and connections to the tube. (Rendering shown above is by Rafael Vinoly Architects)

The relics of industry can tell a very important story about a city’s past glory and gloom.

Seattle’s Gasworks Park was landmarked, letting us marvel at its grotesque beauty without condos or a waterpark ever competing for our interest (though free concerts there by local legends like Pearljam have offered some distraction).

It’s interesting to look at the different tools cities employ to keep these industrial beasts alive.

The Southwest Design Review Board will check in tonight on a strangely familiar West Seattle development.

As built in 1927

The project is at 3811 California Ave. W. The developer initially proposed tearing down the Charleston Court building to build an entirely new project. Then, partway through design review, Charleston Court was nominated for landmark status. The project went on hold for a year.

The landmark board voted in April against landmarking the 1927 building, designed by William Whiteley, clearing the way for demolition. (Original building shown above.)

But the developer is back with new plans that will give the neighbors deja vu.

What the developer wants

The new design (seen at left) proposes retaining the wings of the original building and the building’s courtyard.

The rear portion of the old building would be torn down, but the developer wants to use that brick to create a new building front between the wings.

Steven Butler and Paul Cesmat bought the building in 2007. Project architect is Nicholson Kovalchick.

Crosscut’s Knute Berger wrote an interesting column today about the animosity between historic preservationists and green building proponents.

Too often, he says, green building techniques and density goals are used as justification for tearing down Seattle’s usable buildings and squandering their embodied energy and inherent greenness.

Meanwhile, historic preservationists get sidetracked by the historic and architectural significance of the buildings they are trying to protect. They don’t put that same effort into making a sustainability case for keeping those buildings.

Adaptive reuse in Portland's Pearl District

If Seattle really wants to be sustainable, Berger says, the two groups need to form an alliance. Both need to embrace the environmental value of the existing building and build from there.

I think things get complicated when density concerns are added into the mix.

But some cities, like Portland, have done a great job of encouraging adaptive reuse of historic building stock. These aren’t the landmarked buildings that allow only minimal changes, but the buildings that serve as mainstay to new floors of condos or offices above or around.

The federal government even offers a 10 percent tax credit for adaptive reuse of certain historic buildings. There are a few caveats, like making sure the addition can be removed and the historic building is left largely intact.

It could be painful for preservation purists to see some buildings getting such a drastic face-lift. It will likely be even harder for those greenies who like to start from scratch and leave their fingerprints.

The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation just announced 10 winners of this year’s Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Historic Preservation.

Daniels

The awards, given by State Historic Preservation Officer Allyson Brooks, recognize people, organizations and projects of distinct

ion in Washington historic preservation.

Former City Council member and architect Peter Steinbrueck won a career achievement award, along with National Park Service Arc

heologist

Bob Mierendorf of Marblemount. Crosscut contributor and Mossback columnist Knute Berger won a media award for his coverage of historic preservation issues in Seattle.

Developer Kevin Daniels and King County Councilman Dow Constantine won a special achievement award for their work on preserving the First United Methodist Church alongside a planned highrise on the site.

The modernist architecture non-profit Docomomo WEWA (whose name is a shortening of its mission: Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement in Western Washington) won an education award for “raising awareness about the historical and design impacts of mid-twentieth century architecture in Washington.”

Learn more about award winners here. All will be honored at a ceremony May 13 at the Legislative building in Olympia.