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Posts Tagged ‘Downtown’

The Arctic Hotel is getting close

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Renovation of the historic Arctic Building is nearing completion.

The Artic's signature Walruses

(Quick, before you click the link above, name the architect. Hint: He also designed the old King County Courthouse.)

The Arctic Club Hotel will celebrate its grand opening in May, according to the Web site for Summit Hotels & Resorts. Summit bought the walrus-adorned historic building from the city in 2005 for $5.1 million. Check out a slide show of rooms and more here.

The city purchased the Arctic and the Alaska Building in 1988 for more than twice their 2005 selling price.

Summit has been busy converting the 1916 social club turned office building into an upscale hotel. The landmark building at Third and Cherry needed a full seismic upgrade in addition to repairs and refurbishments.

It’s been fun to see the building getting spruced up for its new purpose. Check out the room design here, and get a glimpse on the left of the refurbished ceiling and chandelier.

The building is no longer limited to those who made it big in the Alaskan Gold Rush, but rooms start at about $250 a night.

(Fun fact, from Jeffrey Ochsner‘s “Shaping Seattle Architecture:” The Arctic Building’s Architect, Augustus Warren Gould, had no academic training and transferred from the contracting business to architecture in the late 1890s.)

Tags: Arctic Building, Downtown, History, Landmarks, Preservation
Posted in Architecture, Historic, Landmarks | No Comments »

It takes a city to raise a child?

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

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…)

Tags: Downtown, Planning, Schools
Posted in Planning, Zoning | 6 Comments »

First Hill, meet downtown. Downtown, this is First Hill.

Monday, March 31st, 2008

DPD is floating an idea to cap I-5 to turn it into a walkable space that reconnects First Hill and Capitol Hill with downtown.

Freeway Park

Interstate-5 has cut Fifth from Sixth Avenue for about four decades. And as anyone who’s gotten off the No. 11 or No. 10 bus right where the three neighborhoods meet can attest, the scale is almost Soviet. Freeway Park makes for a green connection near the convention center, but crossing elsewhere is cement city.

The idea is in early discussion and costs or specifics are nonexistent. It’s one of 21 possible comprehensive plan amendments that had an initial hearing Monday night at City Hall. The comp plan sets the framework for city zoning and planning policy and can be amended once a year.

Other amendments up for consideration:

Not everybody likes the Burke

• Stopping Burke-Gilman in Ballard: An amendment from the North Seattle Industrial Association would prevent construction of bike trails within 100 feet of an existing short line railroad franchise that is in or next to the Ballard Interbay manufacturing and industrial center. The amendment is referring to the Burke-Gilman bike trail, which runs through the area. Eugene Wasserman, who wrote the amendment, says it is unsafe to build bike paths close to truck and rail transport and hurts the maritime industry.

• Protecting tree canopy: A proposal written by Ilze Jones of Jones and Jones Architects and Landscape Architects would set goals and policies for increasing the city’s tree canopy. Kit O’Neill and Cheryl Trivison are co-sponsors of the proposal, which would make trees an element for consideration in land use planning and recommends the city set aside 48,000 acres for trees.

The urban canopy, aka trees

The proposal also suggests naming a tree czar.

• A dozen up-zones and rezones, including changing specific industrial zones in Ballard, South Lake Union, Harbour Avenue and Stadium East to mixed-use or commercial use.

City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee held its first hearing on comp plan amendments Monday night. Contact Committee Chair Sally Clark to let her know what you think.

Tags: Downtown, Parks and open space, Planning, Zoning
Posted in Planning, Zoning | 4 Comments »