homeWelcome, sign in or click here to subscribe.login
     


 

 

Real Estate


print  email to a friend  reprints add to mydjc  

February 4, 2015

Modera Ballard will offer larger apartments

By LYNN PORTER
Journal Staff Reporter

Concept rendering courtesy of Tiscareno Associates [enlarge]
Modera Ballard will have studios, open- and traditional one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms and three-bedrooms.

Mill Creek Residential plans to start construction in September on an apartment project on property in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood that is now home to a 1945 Colonial Revival style funeral home.

Tiscareno Associates is designing the six-story project called Modera Ballard for 2003 N.W. 57th St., where the Wiggen & Sons Funeral Home building and a parking lot are located.

Modera Ballard will have 118 apartments, 14 live-work units and 102 below-grade parking stalls. It should be complete in late 2017, said Sean G. Hyatt, managing director with Dallas-based Mill Creek.

His firm is asking the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board to determine if the funeral home building is a city landmark — a designation that would affect what the developer can do with the property.

Mill Creek wants to demolish the building, and has not decided if it will move forward with its project if it is deemed a landmark. Hyatt said it has not considered incorporating the building into the project as is not distinguished.

The developer is under contract to buy the site from Wiggen & Sons Mortuary, a subsidiary of Bonney-Watson.

Hyatt said Modera Ballard should appeal to “anyone that loves Ballard” as it is near Ballard Public Library, Ballard Commons Park, Market Street and restaurants and nightlife.

Photo courtesy of NK Architects [enlarge]
Mill Creek Residential is asking the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board to determine if the funeral home building is a landmark.

The building will not be studio-heavy, as a number of new Seattle projects are, he said, nor will it have the “microscopic” European appliances found in some apartments locally.

Modera Ballard will have studios, open- and traditional one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms and three-bedrooms. The units will range from 530 to 1,200 square feet. That's larger than what generally is being built locally as Mill Creek believes the Millennials many developers are designing for will eventually couple-up and want to move into larger apartments “before they buy their house in Crown Hill,” Hyatt said. Modera Ballard's three bedrooms can accommodate couples who want an office or guest room, or who have young children, he said.

The building will have a leasing center, storage, fitness center, patio, rooftop deck, club room with an inside-outside fireplace, and a lounge “for when you are waiting for Uber to come pick you up,” Hyatt said.

The Landmarks board will consider nomination of the funeral home building as a city landmark at 3:30 p.m. March 4 in room 4060 of Seattle Municipal Tower at 700 Fifth Ave.

NK Architects prepared the application, which is at http://tiny.cc/0prxsx under “Current Nominations.” Comments may be sent by March 3 to the board at Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, P.O. Box 94649, Seattle, WA 98124-4649.

According the application, Elizabeth Ayer and Rolland D. Lamping designed the building in “a very simplified or stripped-down Colonial Revival style.” Their firm, Edwin J. Ivey Inc., was primarily known for designing single-family houses.

Ayer was the first woman to graduate from the architecture program at the University of Washington and to receive a Washington architectural license, the application notes.

In 1961, part of the Wiggen & Sons Funeral Home building was demolished and a new Modern-style addition constructed. The addition was designed by Edward Mahlum, a prominent modernist architect in Seattle from the 1950s to the 1970s, whose firm is today known as Mahlum Architects, according to the application.

Mill Creek has built more than 12,300 apartments and bought 2,000 units. It is building other Modera projects in Seattle. One is under way on Capitol Hill. Construction will start next week on another in South Lake Union.

The Modera Ballard team also includes YT Engineering, structural; Bush, Roed, & Hitchings, civil engineering; Lair Design, interiors; Communita Atelier, landscape architect; Terra Associates, geotechnical; and Pressler Associates, MEP coordination.


 


Lynn Porter can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.




Email or user name:
Password:
 
Forgot password? Click here.