There is a chance Wednesday night’s session of the East Design Review Board will be postponed due to wintry weather. If so, you’ll be prepared early for a January 29th session reviewing on The Victor, a planned eight-story, 227-unit apartment building on First Hill.
If not, read up quick and settle in for what could be the project’s final step in the public design process.
CHS reported last May on the early plans for the project from developer Carmel Partners and Encore Architects and their “church-friendly” midrise design in a zone that could have featured an apartment tower. Instead, the new development planned for 1100 Boylston will replace a surface parking lot with lots of new First Hill housing but even more deference for the neighboring First Baptist Church.
Carmel paid a pretty price for the parking lot land — it bought the three parcels making up the lot from the Polyclinic for $18.1 million in 2018 according to county records.
After bouts of disappointment with the earliest designs for the project, the design board Wednesday night — again, if the snow doesn’t push things back — will be looking at the project’s planned mix of metal and masonry materials, facade symmetry to echo First Hill’s “formality,” and the design’s achievement of a “courtyard” typology “similar to many traditional First Hill apartment buildings.”
Does it succeed? Find out tonight… or in two weeks.
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/event/design-review-1100-boylston-ave-3/
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Looks fine to me. Just wish it was taller.
Fugly. And super bulky. Looks like a suburban office building with Home Depot finishing. And, yes, it should be leaner and much taller, with more units. Seattle likes to talk about solving the housing and homelessness crises but they fail to take steps (like minimum height zones) needed to address the problems. This thing looks more monstrosity than attractive, whatever their ‘deference’.
This will have 227 units, and still the “taller….taller” crowd isn’t satisfied. I like the scale of this mid-rise building, and am glad that it will include some masonry (? brick).
And, by the way, this will be a market-rate building (apparently), so it won’t do anything to help homelessness or the “housing crisis.”
Of course it will help. Adding housing – at any price point – helps alleviate the housing crisis. Affordable housing provides more immediate help for the homeless and needy, but market-rate is still helpful to the overall picture.
Are you saying that building more and more expensive, market-rate housing somehow “trickles down” and results in lower rents for other housing? I seriously doubt that this actually happens in the real world. In Seattle, we have already built tons of new, expensive housing….yet rents remain high, and climbing.
Please provide evidence for your claim.
Just build it.
I like the design of the exterior.
Would be nice to see at least a few units in a project of this size that a family could live in.
Am I a weird outlier, or are their too many trees on the crown area of First Hill? The tree canopy is just so mature and large that it blocks out all light on the ground. No with all the added mid-rise and high-rise buildings popping up, the neighborhood is even darker at street level.
Why is this construction even initiated? It is not only blocking the nice church, but also disturbing the quiet and normal life of local residents. With the pandemic, everybody is working from home, and nobody can tolerate construction noise while working. Please be a little considerate, think out of other people’s shoes, instead of only counting and maximizing the profit your company can earn.