The Seattle Times had an interesting story today about artsy Seattleites being priced out of the city core and into edge neighborhoods like South Park.

It describes a progression taken from Belltown and Capitol Hill, once the meccas of alternative culture, to Georgetown and then to South Park.

They can’t go any further, so the fear and reality is they’ll move to the effortlessly affordable and funky Portland.

Portland, of course, has its own saga: The once edgy, industrial Pearl District is now home to hordes of artsy, wealthy Seattle refugees and its former residents are already getting priced out of the Alberta Arts District in Northeast Portland. Of course, “priced out” in Portland is when you can no longer buy for $300,000. We have it a little steeper here.

Getting priced out is a tragedy that is almost taken for granted here, and one that sometimes distresses and other times annoys me. I’m concerned about the edgy people moving to the edges or away because I am concerned about losing Seattle’s essential weirdness. That’s a cultural concern and an economic concern. I think both are very valid and I wish more people did.

But I also see some exciting changes in the city. There’s gentrification but then there’s neighborhood building. There are invested homeowners, diverse neighborhoods and thriving small businesses selling quirky, local stuff in the corners of our city. Many people actually choose to live in the “edge neighborhoods” and don’t ever wish they could live in Belltown instead.

The Times article paints a picture of being priced out as a painful progression. But at the story’s end, it’s revealed that its protagonist is not only able to afford to live in South Park, he owns his home, AND the home next door, which he rents out to make money.

It’s a thought-provoking piece that gives nuance to the “priced-out” tale.

Donovan Rypkema, the historic preservation and economic development expert, was here this week from Washington, D.C. for a lecture sponsored by Historic Seattle.

I went to his lecture Thursday and spoke to him Friday morning. He had been out with his camera, wandering First Hill and downtown and snapping photos of older blocks and newer developments. He said Seattle has really changed in the 20 years he’s been watching it.

“I’ve loved (Seattle) because of its grittiness and that’s rapidly disappearing,” he said.

He said he was also surprised we don’t have more historic districts in our great, historic town. Rypkema believes historic preservation is key to economic development but has a special affinity for historic districts. Unlike one historic building, where preservation can be seen as an economic burden on a building owner, he said, a district sees all its values rise.

He said rehabbing a historic building is the greenest construction there is and said there is no function in today’s world that couldn’t happily be housed in yesterday’s building. He said churches, universities and hospitals are the worst at claiming they need to raze historic buildings to suit their modern needs.

“Developers are often painted as the villains in neighborhoods but the biggest villains in neighborhoods are churches hospitals and universities,” he said Friday. “They screw up more neighborhoods than anyone else in the country.”

At the Thursday lecture at Wallingford’s lovely Good Shepherd Center, Rypkema said historic districts also: have stabler prices and are better equipped to ride out economic downturns, and draw better tourists and do a better job overall at supporting the local economy than new construction (because more money goes to workers than materials, and then the workers spend that cash locally).

Seattle has seven historic districts: Ballard Avenue, Columbia City, Fort Lawton, Harvard-Belmont, the International District, Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. For comparison, Portland has 13 historic districts and seven conservation districts.

Read the entire text of Rypkema’s lecture for yourself, and read his own blog about his recent trips to Seattle and Portland.

City officials will soon have to break the news to some Seattle businesses and organizations that they will be neighbor to a city jail in 2012.

It’s not a fun job, but some would say that’s why they’re making the big bucks.

It’s not really their fault though. The number of people in jail on a Seattle misdemeanor has actually gone down 38 percent from 1996 through last year, thanks in part to alternative sentencing and monitoring programs.

But the county, which has been housing misdemeanor offenders for cities including Seattle, is running out of room and plans to discontinue the practice in 2012.

That doesn’t give the city much time to drag its heels over the site.

They fired a warning shot this week, announcing four potential candidates, picked from an initial list of 35. The city said they needed at least seven acres, easy access to arterials and had to be outside residential areas.

They also looked at other factors including access to public transportation, environmental conditions and geotechnical conditions. I’m sure it’s no coincidence the sites are spread across the city.

City officials said sites could be cut or added after a series of public meetings next month. They need to have a site set by early next year in order to make tight design and construction timelines to get the jail built by 2012.

Which do you think they’ll pick?

• 11762 Aurora Ave. N., on land that is now a Puetz Golf driving range and shop

• 1600 W. Armory Way in Interbay, site of the former Northwest Center for the Retarded that was acquired for the monorail

• A site at the corner of Highland Park Way Southwest and West Marginal Way that is jointly owned by the city, the state and private industry

• 9501 Myers Way South, on a vacant lot owned by the city.

My grandmother tells me that the streetcars that criss-crossed Seattle when she was young had wicker seats and cost a nickel. They were everywhere, they were fast and they were used by everyone.

Times have certainly changed. Say what you will about the vices and virtues of streetcars, the reality is they’re not cheap.

SDOT presented a $595 million four-line streetcar network plan to Seattle City Council members Tuesday. The four lines they propose would connect a dozen central and northern neighborhoods for about $40 million a mile.

Some council members questioned the mode of transit. Buses are cheaper, more maneuverable and we’ve been investing in them for forty years, said council member Tom Rasmussen. There’s also the more affordable electric trolleys (pretty much buses) as an option, Rasmussen said.

Others questioned the duplication between the lines and existing and proposed Metro routes.

SDOT said the streetcars will make some of those bus routes obsolete, like the No. 70 in the U District, and will also fill some service gaps, like between downtown Ballard and downtown Fremont. (I guess the No. 28 bus doesn’t count because it doesn’t go deep into Ballard?)

Another benefit: Streetcar money stays in Seattle, unlike Metro dollars and service, which are distributed throughout the county.

Also, people are more likely to ride the streetcar than the bus, they say. They certainly used to, and they have taken it up in most cities that put one in (or put one back in, sigh).

I thought tons of people were riding the bus until I got a reality check a few weeks ago. The Dalai Lama was here and my bus was full to the gills still 30 minutes from downtown. It passed hundreds of riders on the way into town, people who live on the bus line and just don’t take it for whatever reason most days.

My grandmother remembers when it was assumed you would take the streetcar everywhere in Seattle. I wish we were debating how to update those old lines and not trying to figure out whether to pay for these new ones.

The neighborhood named after the first covered shopping center is coming out from under Northgate Mall’s shadow.

A draft environmental impact statement released last week looks into up-zoning parts of Northgate to allow buildings of up to 125 feet. The areas proposed for rezoning are now zoned for up to 65 feet with some nearby areas up to 85 feet.

The city already raised heights and has invested money to help stimulate development in Northgate. Some growth regulation has been cut and a new library, community center and the coming park have spurred private development interest over the past few years.

But city planners say the up-zone is needed to help the city reach density targets for Northgate, one of six Urban Centers earmarked for more growth as the city’s population climbs.

The EIS looks at a 98-acre portion of Northgate south of the Pinehurst neighborhood. It also explores a more targeted rezone of corridors around the north end of the mall and around the new city park planned at Fifth Avenue Northeast and Northeast 112th Street near Target.

The broad version looks at raising building heights to up to 125 feet, and the targeted version proposed maximums of 85 feet. Most of the area now has a height limit of 65 feet. (A portion west of the freeway is zoned to 85 feet but is not proposed for up-zoning.)

The study also discusses incentive zoning to let developers build bigger if they include more affordable housing or pay into affordable housing funds, and possibly for including more open space.

Read the rest of this entry »

I attended a City Club forum Wednesday where two economic experts said that Seattle should be able to brave the coming recession– er, downturn– better than most.

Judith Runstad, a lawyer with Foster Pepper and former chairman of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said that’s because of the strength of our high-tech sector and our cutting-edge health care industry.

She said city and state management policies have also helped prevent the kind of overbuilding that has the glutted California real estate market, weighted down by foreclosures, in a constant nose-dive.

Kevin Phillips, writer, commentator and former Republican Party strategist, said we can thank our geographic position that puts us close to Asia, the coming world power center.

He also said the city should be grateful for its lack of ties to the beleagured financial sector, a relationship that will take its toll on cities like San Francisco.

Still, it could get scary, even for we lucky ones.

Phillips is the author of  “Bad money: Reckless finance, failed politics and the global crisis of American capitalism.” (Sounds like a great children’s bed-time book, doesn’t it?) He said the U.S. has made some bad decisions such as over-reliance on the financial sector as a driving industry while letting the manufacturing industry go, and by piling up an enormous amount of debt.

Add to that plummeting housing prices, commodities inflation and oil prices further dragging down the faltering dollar, and “it is striking in how many things are circling us,” he said.

“We don’t know what this is, but the probability is that this is the first downturn of the next economic era,” Phillips said. “This is much more than just some normal recession.”

To really get out of this trouble, Phillips said the country needs “smarter leadership” in the White House, a comprehensive energy policy and some distance from the financial sector.

“People who just worship the free market, you can’t plan on something like that,” Phillips said. “I think it’s time for something that will restore a little balance, like value engineering.”

In Seattle, we have a lot of serious development players. We’ve got our own big guys and we’ve got the big guys who come here from all over. We’ve got billions of dollars that trade hands every month and cranes all over town.

It’s serious business. But we’ve still got our funky side too. We have our shadow development community. It’s small but it’s still here. And sometimes you get a glimpse of it.

Tom Flood is a teacher and sculptor who owns two funky falling-apart structures on the corner of 34th and Pike in the Madrona neighborhood. For years, he taught kids how to sculpt and weld and build Go-Karts at the building that used to say Madrona Auto in front.

He has plans to build seven super-sustainable live-work units on the site. They will all have green roofs with solar cells and natural ventilation. There will be a central courtyard and rainwater will be used in toilets and washing machines.

A “living fence” in front will let passersby watch graywater being treated as it passes through a transparent planter filled with soil and plants.

The project will cost about $3 million. Flood works as a part-time teacher and his wife, Diane, is a switchman for BNSF Railroad, but they joined forces with small developer Shilshole Development to make it happen.

In the end, the Floods and their kids plan to move into two of the units, gardening on the roof alongside their neighbors.

Flood knows it will be hard for Madrona to accept the loss of his iconic structures. But with a big central courtyard and tenants running small businesses at street level, he hopes to add to the pedestrian landscape. And he plans to salvage the old structures and keep their parts visible on the new.

The project is in design review. Construction will likely start early next year.

Read other bloggers weigh in on other developments planned along 34th in Madrona here and here.

A house designed by two small Seattle firms will serve as a prototype for affordable green living in the Gulf Coast. And it might have a lesson or two for the Puget Sound.

Owen Richards Architects and HyBrid Architects found out Friday that their design was chosen from 182 entries in the 99K house competition sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance and AIA Houston.

Their entry, Core, is compact, adaptable and energy efficient, with geothermal heating and cooling, minimal material waste and a giant solar-powered fan.

The 1,200-square-foot house’s estimated total project cost is less than $99,000. The house will be built in June at a site donated by the city. It will then be auctioned off or sold to a lower income family.

Designers had to keep construction costs under $75,000. They designed the house on a four-foot module to reduce waste, with framing of exterior walls designed to link up at 24 inches, using fewer materials and fewer studs in the walls.

Recycled and sustainable materials were also worked in. The house has cement board siding, pine flooring and recycled concrete paving.

There were some things they couldn’t afford, like the green roof they wanted. Rainwater capture will irrigate the site but won’t run through toilets or the laundry.

The geothermal mechanical system cost a little more, but designers said it will pay for itself in energy saved in less than three years. It uses less than half the energy of a traditional HVAC system. Natural ventilation alone wasn’t an option for those sweltering Houston summers, but designers hope the solar-powered fan will be enough on some days.

The house also takes some green cred from its adaptability, with movable inside walls altering the house from one to four bedrooms or two duplex units instead. That decreases the chances of tear-down or a move when a family’s situation changes.

So why don’t we see many affordable green housing projects, in Seattle or elsewhere? Why is energy efficiency a prestige item? I know of some multi-family affordable projects in the area that are targeting lower energy use, but it sure seems slow to catch on. And it’s hardly cheap.

Of course, it’s impossible to build any house in Seattle for under 99 K. Labor is cheaper in Houston, land values are lower, and zoning and land use regulations are minimal. Wages and prices have a role in there as well. But it still stands to reason that we could be seeing super efficient design for the masses in Seattle.

Does it take a competition to get a house like this built here?

When I heard the news about octogenarian Seattle company Safeco being bought by Boston’s Liberty Mutual Group, I immediately thought of baseball.

I’ve already spent some serious time in Safeco Field biting my nails over pitching changes and yelling my heart out when the M’s are doing well. I also dropped a lot of peanut shells in the Kingdome, so it took me a while to get used to the new space and its new name.

We adapt, of course. I hardly ever expect to see Jay Buhner at a game anymore, and I no longer cheer when I hear an announcer say “A-Rod.”

The Times reported today that Safeco Field will keep its name for the foreseeable future.

Even if Liberty keeps the name Safeco here, I wonder what it will mean to have our relatively new stadium named after a bygone local company. Will it not even matter? Could it sting?

Stadium names take on a life of their own, and though those names are increasingly corporate, they start to channel the city’s character.

Wrigley Field does not make me think of bubble gum, it brings me to the edge of Lake Michigan and the smell of hot dogs. (Read about Wrigley’s own woes here.)

When I hear the words Safeco Field, I hear a long train whistle. I see Ichiro’s signature stance, the bike taxis lined up outside the stadium and the great view of our great city you can only get walking along Occidental at 10:45 p.m. after a Mariners game.

I feel the odd surge of pride I get when out-of-towners muse aloud about whose mascot that silly moose could be.

I hope those feelings stay the same.

What role should climate change have in planning policy?

More importantly, do you have a little time today or tomorrow to answer that question?

The American Planning Association’s assembly is considering a new policy guide on planning and climate change. The guide makes recommendations for local, state, and federal policy changes required to deal with climate change.

Comments are due by Friday, April 25 by email to govtaffairs@planning.org. Click here for more information and click here to read the draft.