The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has created a video in which industry leaders talk about how to make tall buildings liveable.
The video is part of an ongoing series by the council addressing big-picture questions about tall buildings.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are. Sure, Downtown Seattle isn’t perfect. But what other downtown (or “greater downtown”) in the US has all of the following in combination?
- A strong office base that’s the dominant core of its region
- Leadership in the technology, research, and innovation economy
- Room to grow
- Great shopping, from major chains to mom & pops
- Lots of tourism, including business and pleasure visitors
- A good number of residents, from 20-somethings to retirees, and from rich to starving artists
- Excellent arts and entertainment – performing, visual, movies, etc.
- Fantastic scenery and natural setting
- A mix of new, old, innovative, and traditional
- A heart and soul with numerous beloved touchpoints
The “room to grow” point might seem odd. We city enthusiasts tend to love cities that are already mostly full, like Boston, and we can be impatient that Seattle isn’t there yet. But a downtown is an economic engine, not just for enjoyment. Accommodating growth and change is crucial in a growing region and changing world. Seattle is lucky that (a) we have growing organizations, (b) that they want to be in the center of town, and (c) that the center of town has room for them, at any size.
We also owe a big thanks to tourists, an often maligned group. Many do nothing more than fly in, drop hundreds (or thousands) on clothes, hotels, and related taxes, and leave. They subsidize our museums, which can be far more ambitious because of it. They give restaurants more reason to open beyond standard lunch and dinner times. Most don’t drive, as evidenced by the small garages at our hotels. So what if they get in the way sometimes. Why not be glad for the boost, and even flattered that they chose to come?
That gets to the biggest key for a vibrant downtown – variety. If you want great retail and busy sidewalks, you need a lot of types of people doing a lot of types of things. Office workers bring peak daytime crowds and busy lunch places. Residents buy furniture and groceries, and are always around regardless of time and weather. Retirees, service workers, artists, and executives are all valued customers for broad ranges of stores. Special credit goes to any group that adds activity without focusing it all on 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, like students and tourists.
We’re not only doing well on every front, but improving in most. Retail, offices, tourism, housing, research, and the arts are all growing. As a result, we will gain vibrancy, while the “room to grow” gradually diminishes. And maybe we’ll be even luckier.
It’s the late 1980s. A Lower Queen Anne resident is in the habit of scaling the fence to get to Myrtle Edwards Park, sometimes even climbing over slow-moving trains to get there. He hadn’t heard the Blue Scholars song posted on SeattleScape October 11th.
Myrtle Edwards is a heck of a park, and a great route north and south. But it’s always been (nearly) impossible to get to for thousands of nearby residents and workers without going the long way around. Thankfully the temptation to risk fate just went away.
On Friday, the West Thomas Street Pedestrian and Bicycle Overpass opened! Based upon a visit Sunday morning, it already seems popular. A steady stream of people wandered across in both directions, despite the wet streets and ominous clouds, looking very pleased. It’s a good bet that nearby office workers will do the same on work days.
The bridge is a major boost to Seattle’s bike and pedestrian network, including a lot of commuters. In one of the busiest parts of town, and a crossroads, getting anywhere has meant using major, unfriendly roads to get past the tracks. Now, someone working near the Seattle Center and living in Ballard finally has a direct bike route home entirely on the trail and minor streets, assuming he or she goes over the Locks. In a few years even South Lake Union will be have a highway-free route to Elliott Bay.
Of course, having great parks is important by itself, whether for quality of life or economic development, if the former is too namby-pamby for you. Cities that prosper tend to be places people want to live in. People that prosper, in any sense, are often the ones who like where they are, or get inspired by where they are, with plenty of opportunity for both exercise and relaxation. A short walk to have lunch with the waves lapping at the rocks while watching ships pass the snow-capped Olympics…that’ll do it.
It’s not perfect yet. The middle section of the park could use minor upgrades as more people visit and linger near the bridge. A few more benches would be the minimum. Eventually a larger hardscape area would make sense, maybe with a water feature. Lighting that small area at night would also encourage more use, including winter pedestrian and bike commuting.
Here are two more needs going forward: One is a direct stairway from the Magnolia Bridge to the Elliott Bay Trail (the existing one requires walking over the tracks and is sometimes blocked off). Most important of all is continuing the Thomas (or thereabouts) connection east with a skybridge to Capitol Hill, connecting our densest census tracts with our fastest growing employment center.
Right now, possibly September 26th specifically, represents the largest amount of new housing construction greater Downtown Seattle has ever had. This is very exciting for those who want Seattle to feel and function like a real big city, with the vibe, services, walkable lifestyles, and so on that entails.
The “largest” is based upon my own napkin count of housing under construction in about 2,000 acres, from Lower Queen Anne and South Lake Union to the dense part of Capitol Hill to First Hill and the stadiums, gerrymandered up to 901 Dexter and 15th & Pine. It’s imprecise but probably errs low, particularly east of I-5. The 2006 in-construction number topped out at 5,500 units. This week, including some projects that just got building permits and have had some sort of recent activity (at least demo), or had DJC coverage about starting this week, the number is 6,400 units. Or call it 6,000, in case some aren’t real starts.
So where does that leave us in that journey to big citydom, or, using the Vancouver example, smaller-but-more-vibrant-in-some-ways citydom?
The Downtown Seattle Association reports 60,000 residents in 2012, based on census tracts that are vaguely similar to the area I described. They call it 20,510 residents per square mile. By comparison, Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula, in just 1,420 acres, had 99,000 residents in 2011 for a density of 44,387 per square mile. Including Seattle’s recent completions plus the 6,000 units and a normal multiplier, we should end up with 70,000 residents. That’s excellent by US standards for a city our size (roughly double a similar count in Denver or Minneapolis, which are well ahead of Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and many others), but to reach Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula density, we’d need 130,000. At Manhattan density, we’d have 210,000.
Whether we’ll continue along this path hardly seems debatable. New construction might outpace demand, briefly. But Amazon and a steady inflow of local employer relocations are expanding greater Downtown’s workforce. Perhaps the most important driver, basic desire to live in the center, should grow as services are added and new residents make neighborhoods feel friendlier, a circular effect. The demographics will be fantastic for a while due to both baby boomers and their kids. And apparently driving to work is never going to be cheap or quick again, making a short walk attractive to more people. Even if people start buying rather than renting, very little supply will be available, particularly condos. And that will kick off more condo projects.
So here’s hoping the boom never ends (!) or at least keeps coming back, preferably with soft landings. And maybe when we hit 80,000 Belltown will have a supermarket and a conveyor-belt sushi place.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a competition that calls for about 80 micro studio apartments of 275 to 300 square feet in Manhattan. The city is seeking proposals to design, construct and operate the micro-unit building on a city-owned site. Seattle already has a number of these type units, some of which a developer dubbed apodments. Here is the Wall Street Journal story about the competition.
ZGF Architects Seattle partner Allyn Stellmacher has been traveling to remote areas of Northern Saskatchewan to visit with schoolchildren and community members to hear what they want in the design of their new Children’s Hospital. Joined to Royal University Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan will be a maternal and children’s hospital. Currently in design, it is scheduled to open in late 2016. Saskatoon Health Region is the largest health region in Saskatchewan, serving approximately 300,000 local residents in more than 100 cities, towns, and villages. It is a provincial center providing specialized care to thousands of people from across the province.
Along with Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan officials, Stellmacher and Terri Johnson, an interior design principal, are visiting communities only accessible by aircraft, or seasonal roads, including Stony Rapids, La Ronge, Ile a la Crosse and Meadow Lake. The team has met with kids in grades 2 – 9, to hear what they would want in the hospital, should they need to use it. ZGF said the children want to have family with them, and to have familiar sights around them.
Henry Downing Howlett is the prime architect for the project and ZGF Architects is the secondary architect.
The project manager is ZW Group. The mechanical engineers are Affiliated Engineers and Daniels Wingerak Engineering Ltd. and the structural engineers are Halcrow and Brownlee Beaton Kreke.
View a pictorial from the planning process in Northern Saskatchewan here.
Sometimes the City of Seattle does something awesome. On Wednesday, the City Council Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee might move forward on reduced or eliminated parking requirements in new residential and commercial buildings in some core neighborhoods with good transit, as part of a broader Municipal Code update. Of course nearly all developments will continue to include parking, often lots of it; the point is the City won’t force developers to build it, or as much, in some areas. The Council is considering overlapping concepts by the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and the Seattle Planning Commission. The Planning Commission link has a good map showing the relatively small areas affected.
Here are some reasons reduced requirements are outstanding policy:
1. It’s about “right-sizing” parking to what will actually be used. Developers want to have enough – too few spaces and their housing or commercial space won’t rent or sell, or won’t at the right price; too many and they’re wasting money. So they’ll guess, probably conservatively in most cases. The exceptions will be developers who specifically target tenants without cars, such as students, 20-somethings, or low-income seniors. Others will build more spaces than average. In neighborhoods with precedent, the developers have gotten good at predicting demand. For example, new mid-price apartment buildings on the edges of Downtown will often build 0.7 to 0.9 spaces per unit or thereabouts, with zero required.
2. Its about affordability. Unused spaces cost tens of thousands of dollars each to develop, even before specific site challenges such as inefficient geometries or groundwater. That’s a huge added cost shared by the developer (if the project pencils at all) and the residents of the building. Skipping that cost is a big help for providing new housing at reasonable cost. Regarding the lower price points not covered by subsidy, all housing tends to move downmarket over the decades; the units we’re talking about will drop at a similar pace from a lower starting point (or more quickly if you believe these units won’t be in demand). Also, with less parking architects can design more housing units or commercial space on a given site, which ought to reduce land costs per unit, even if the land itself is worth slightly more because it’s more developable. (Some detractors claim developers won’t pass the savings along, but when developers and building owners compete against each other, of course they’ll compete on price.)
3. It’s not a big reduction. The reduced requirements only apply to new buildings (obviously!). Even decades from now, most housing will still date to the years when parking was required for all units nearly everywhere. Mix in some buildings with ratios like 0.8 and the average won’t drop much. Tenants will self-select, with the car-less not paying extra for parking and those with cars choosing to pay their way. Detractors claim street parking will be jammed…not relevant if developers meet their targets, and a self-limiting factor regardless.
4. It’s about equality. Currently, people without cars are generally required to pay for parking they don’t use, effectively subsidizing the people who do use it. With reduced parking ratios, most owners will rent parking separately, and pay their own way – they’ll pay about what they do now, and the rest of us will pay less.
5. It’s already working. Much of greater Downtown hasn’t required parking in decades. Other districts reduced or eliminated their requirements more recently. So we’re seeing a lot of more reasonable ratios in those areas, balancing cost and demand. It’s the free market at work. Since there’s precedent, developers can see how a price point, unit size, and location translates, on average, into a number of parking spaces that will be used, meaning they can predict demand with decent accuracy.
Please pass this, Council!
Generally it’s a good idea to focus transit service on trunk lines, to put the service where the most riders are. So, generally, King County Metro should be congratulated for its proposed route changes.
But that’s not the only priority. While nobody expects Metro to go everywhere, it shouldn’t cut entire neighborhoods off, particularly job centers where workers have grown to rely upon transit, which benefits all of us as well as the riders. Outside the major nodes it’s ok to ask people to walk, in excess of a half-mile in some cases, but how much beyond that is ok?
Harbor Island is about to lose its service entirely outside of the SW Spokane Street corridor at the south end. It’s more than a mile from there to the northern-most employers such as Vigor Marine and Crowley, much of it not particularly safe or comfortable, particularly in the dark. Today Route 35 runs two buses each rush hour (none the rest of the time), a bit
The current riders don’t want much, or so says the one who inspired this post — just a couple trips up the island at rush hour, ideally including one a little later than the current 4:09. Something a few blocks from work rather than the solid mile.
Solutions might be a special looping version of Route 50 a couple times per rush hour (either in addition to or instead of the main 50), or a separate rush hour shuttle connecting from the 50 to the north end of the island. Neither would be free, but either would be cheap vs. deleting a whole district from service.
Transit should help the the city function well, and parallel our regional strategy. Harbor Island packs a lot of economic punch, cramming in a lot of seaport and industry uses. It’s done this for generations. We’re not talking about leapfrogging new development and expecting new public services to cover it. This is about serving what’s existed for generations, and an existing community of riders.
Please don’t cut off this community.
Rethinking the Seattle Center is a favorite civic pastime. When the general public hears about it, the topic is Big Plans, whether the ill-fated Disney concept in the late 80s, the more recent visioning, or whatever might happen to Key Arena. But meanwhile, little upgrades and outside influences are perhaps more important in what the Center is now, and what it will become.
At 50 years old, the Center is already pretty darn good, for all its imperfections and missed opportunities. It’s many things to many people — the first or second place tourists visit, an event center 365 days of the year, a park, and, if the Market is the city’s heart, certainly another vital organ…the lungs perhaps. It does all this while remaining a 24/7 great place to be,
Today is a good time to visit the Center House. The Food Court upgrades are one of those little changes, ”little” being relative. From a passer-by perspective, they seem to be somewhere after demo and some shell upgrades but before the addition of new food outlets. Yet what a cool new perspective right now! The west side of the main hall is opened up to the outer wall, with windows to a new dining balcony on that side. Also, more of the south entrance area is now open the to hall. Together, the feeling is a bigger, brighter space, but still the Center House many of us love. It’s worth a visit if you’re nearby and curious.
Other “little” items include the planned KEXP studio at First & Republican, which promises to enliven a dead corner, the recent skate park addition (teenagers are reportedly people too!), and the Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens, which turned a block-long glorified service entry at Second & Mercer into mostly human space. The Chihuly Garden and Glass, rising next to the Space Needle, qualifies as big. Together, these changes and many others help the Center be more things for more people, and keep it fresh, both in repair terms and with new things to explore.
Maybe because the Center is such as good ”destination,” when people think of improvements they tend to think in those terms — filling the clock with more attractions and events. But the rise of the surrounding neighborhoods and new connections are showing new promise for the Center.
Some is the simple addition of more residents and workers. This is already happening and seems poised to continue, particularly on the residential side. The second is neighborhood connections. In the coming years, the Great Wall of Aurora will go away between Harrison and Denny, Broad will have less traffic (ending at 5th & Thomas), and the Mercer underpass will be rebuilt. Suddenly a horrible walk from SLU will be much nicer and shorter.
With more people and better access, in 2013 and especially by 2017, we’ll have a lot more people within walking distance. The surrounding neighborhoods will never be dense enough to make the Center busy by themselves; festivals or at least opera/theater/game nights are needed for that. But office workers and residents hang out, buy coffee or lunch, or simply walk through on the way home. When on foot or bike, they simply integrate the Center into their lives — more people being there, shopping there, whatever, while also sometimes attending events and visiting museums. The Center, like any urban retail, attraction, or park, doesn’t need to be in frenzy mode all the time; moderating the slow times a bit can be a big success.
And that’s where the Center is headed.
For more information about the Center House project, go here.
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