Seattlest: NY Times Wonders About Wonder Bread Sign

Nate

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 10:34:03 -0800

Thanks for this addendum, I couldn’t agree with you more. I hope the Jackson area community keeps the pressure on the city to work in partnership with them and I think it would be great if the city got serious about a real streetcar network--and I hope Jackson Street is where the next expansion happens. As for the Safeway building—ugh. What a disappointment that building is. We’ve got to get some stronger neighborhood-based design authority in this city.

Courtney

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:00:22 -0800

Thanks for a thoughtful reply, Nate. I should add the caveat that I'm not advocating an approach that stalls growth in an area so close to downtown, that would be remarkably short-sighted. But as you point out, how that growth is envisioned and enacted can vary widely. The residents of the Jackson Place Community Council are all very adamant about trying to restore that "corridor" to a bustling street-level community that it once used to be. I concur--we'd love to see more small shops and smart building to make that area vibrant. That would indeed be much much better than what is there now (abandoned lots filling up with trash). What I don't want to see is another complex like the one that went in across Madison from Deano's, which is a brick monstrosity with a huge Safeway at the base level, so that the entire 23rd Ave side of that block is a gigantic brick wall. What a waste. The committee that is deciding what will happen to these South Downtown area doesn't represent the small business owners and single-family homes in the area, and we're all pretty nervous about what that could yield. The good news is that the Jackson Place Community Council is extremely active and involved, and that's the best starting point for keeping Nickels from deciding what the "character" of our neighborhood should be.

Nate

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:49:55 -0800

So anyway, back to the um, article. The concerns raised about development are valid. Things are gonna change around here, and we'll have to work nights and weekends to keep 'em honest. Let's face it, whatever the design standards we use here are, they're clearly toothless. We're tearing down 3 story brick buildings to build 4 story wood buildings with vinyl siding. For some reason, development pressure in Seattle is on architecturally interesting older buildings while jail/bunker (excuse me "international") style buildings seem to have a protective bubble around them. Worse than the staying power of these relics of an architecturally unfortunate era is the permanence of parking lots on prime real estate. I am a supporter of the growth management philosophy that includes increased building heights in places like cities, and prohibition against buildings (read: subdivisions) in places like farms and forest. You really can't have the latter without the former. But those of us who already live here should be able to afford to stay, and we shouldn't have to watch it turn into a crappy, poorly designed place. Growth can be a good thing, economically, culturally, politically, socially and in other ways. But it takes work to ensure that growth occurs as an enhancement, rather than an impact to a particular community. Building height limits can be a shortsighted and self-defeating way to achieve this. If we really had high design standards, tacky cheap buildings couldn't be built on prime property, right up next to the living room windows of existing buildings, and we might even find that big buildings could add character to the built environment. Right now it is set up in such a way that developers can build something that just looks good enough to their renters or buyers, and since they will spend their time looking out of, not at said building; this puts the rest of us at a disadvantage. That's my 2 cents. If you got this far, thanks for reading my drivel.

Raw Data

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:27:50 -0800

My comment (admittedly puerile) was a reflection of the quality of your post.

Courtney

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:14:17 -0800

Thank you, Raw Data. Next week I will, at your urging, work on some unconventional pablum.

Michael

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:18:25 -0800

Touche, Raw Data. Drive-by insults via pseudonymous comment certainly puts you in an unconventional class. And spewing bile, that beats pablum, too, doesn't it?

Raw Data

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:51:40 -0800

What conventional pablum you spew.

Michael

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:56:57 -0800

Ha! The NY Times screws up: "Still, some, like the Wonder Bread sign and the neon R for the Rainier Brewing Company, which is now in a neon museum, are no longer hovering above thriving businesses." MOHAI is a neon museum now?