Seattlest: Towards a Higher Seattle

Dan

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:02:01 -0800

>affordable housing advocates who wanted assurance that there'd actually be some. Which I can completely see. Shouldn't there be something worked into the deals for these buildings that mandates that they contain so many units of affordable housing rather than making them throw money into a bank for affordable housing elsewhere? Because I'm skeptical about where the elsewhere will be.

Michael

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:51:39 -0800

I went to the public hearing about changing the height restrictions, and the developers that attended had definite chubbies for taller buildings. They weren't so into the "skinny" part, wanting to build from lot line to lot line and leave as little sidewalk as possible. The only people who seemed to be arguing against raising heights were a) people whose view would be restricted (from the west sides of First and Capitol Hills) and b) affordable housing advocates who wanted assurance that there'd actually be some.

me

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:44:23 -0800

Yes, some developers are very excited. There is at least one building already being designed to fit under the new codes, even though they haven't been approved. The idea behind encouraging density like this is that people will live, work and play all in the same place--walking instead of driving, which should alleviate traffic concerns. the reality is that this is not always the case. I read an op-ed piece warning Seattle not to fall too much in love with Vancouver's high-rises, because their downtown is basically turning into a condo city--housing is much more lucrative than office space right now. So now people are having to do reverse commutes out of the city to work. Kind of the opposite of what they were going for. There was also an interesting article in the DJC yesterday about encouraging some Seattle Public Schools to open downtown and in Belltown, to encourge more families to move there. Because yeah, right now there is no infrastructure. It's an interesting issue and the new codes have a lot of interesting provisions. We'll see how it plays out.

Jake of 8bitjoystick.com

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:04:59 -0800

The strange thing is that the organizers of HempFest are also advocating and lobbing for a higher Seattle. Hey the TypeKey registration is still broken. It give the error "No such entry at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 849."