Seattlest: Pike/Pine Isn't Dying - It's Just Going To Be...Different

Barney

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:19:46 -0800

Well, you can move to Spokane and live in the dark.

Seattle is Neat

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 21:04:56 -0800

Well at least you can always count on the fact that Aurora will always be there for you with its unchanging atmosphere. Even better is the fact that all these great strip clubs will be opening up there inviting anyone looking for a job to cash in!

MichelleBee

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 11:29:55 -0800

The one bright side to these new-style condos is that they are built for mixed use. So you will be able to live and work in a downtown area. I neither work downtown, nor own a new condo, but I would rather have new development in the form of mixed use space as opposed to urban flight. McMansions are the real evil. We can't stop development, but we can at least shape how it is taking form.

Adrienne

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 09:59:44 -0800

um, hasn't ballard already started this slide? just because there aren't "high rise" condos yet, it doesn't mean that gentrification of the neighborhood hasn't been in full force for the last 8 years or so.... as for pike/pine - i'm sad that many of these establishments are on the way out, but i guess it's inevitable. increasingly, people want the hip without the grit.

Lola

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:21:35 -0800

>Or, like Seattlest, you can visit a mortgage broker, hear that you can't afford a studio Lord Almighty, is that ever true for me. Who the HELL is buying these places? Not people in social services.

Nate

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:41:42 -0800

This is precisely why we need to reevaluate our building code. When the allowable building "envelope" is stout and bulky a lot of real estate is required to achieve the density we all want. But if the building envelope were tall and skinny, the density gained by that project (pictured) could have been achieved by displacing just one or two businesses, instead of wiping out an entire row of treasured storefronts.

COMTE

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:18:25 -0800

This is the inevitable price of gentrification - and yes, it did happen in Belltown as well, back in the mid '90's (remember the Jello Mold Building?), when the neighborhood was pretty much the exclusive enclave of artists, boozers, panhandlers, and junkies. Then, at the height of the dot.com boom the area became attractive to condo developers who marketed B-town's "funky, artistic, creative ambiance" to employees of Amazon, and all those other now nearly forgotten venture capitalized e-commerce startups, while at the same time escalating real-estate values to the point of driving out all the funky/artistic/creative people who were responsible for the ambiance in the first place. It's an old story, one told in Greenwich Village, The Mission District, The Pearl District, and scores of other former low-rent artistic neighborhoods, now upscaled for the so-called "creatives" who, like the people now snapping up the overpriced cookie-cutter "vertical cubicles" in Belltown & Freemont, believe that working as a sub-assistant Marketing Manager for Corbis or Adobe gives them "artistic cache". Such is occuring now on lower CapHill, and such will no doubt occur in Ballard & Wallingford in 10-to-20 years or so.