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They won’t rise high but a new wave of huge development projects — some jigsawing chunks of property to piece together near block-long complexes — is taking shape across Capitol Hill. The latest to emerge is making plans to rise just north of Cal Anderson Park where a set of at least five old homes converted over the decades into duplexes and triplexes is being readied for demolition to make way.
Early plans from San Francisco-based developers Carmel Partners and Seattle-based Neiman Taber Architects will piece together a puzzle of $1 million-plus parcels to make space for a new eight-story, nearly 300-unit apartment complex on the block of E Denny between 10th and 11th Ave just north of Cal Anderson and across the street from the hundreds of new apartment units and new mixed-use development above Capitol Hill Station.
The plans updated in February are an expansion of earlier efforts by the developer to create a development about half the new size on the block. But the addition of the new parcels opens the door to a much bigger deal.
The expanded plans echo the acquisition reported by CHS last week that have expanded plans for new mixed-use development at 14th and Union through the block and onto E Madison. The deal will allow Euclid Development and Capitol Hill-based architects Board and Vellum to expand a planned seven-story development from an 80-unit building at 14th and Union to one that now jigsaws into the block with 136 apartment units above mixed-use commercial and an underground parking lot.
For development plans on Capitol Hill in 2022, bigger appears to be better. Limited by zoning that tops out under the city’s now three-year-old Mandatory Housing Affordability plan at only eight stories in some of the most densely packed blocks of housing in Seattle and the West Coast, Capitol Hill projects, instead, continue to spread out.
At 15th and John, the project to redevelop the neighborhood’s Safeway property will top out at only five stories but spread out across the block with two new buildings including a 50,000-square-foot grocery, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail spaces, and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars.
The latest wave isn’t necessarily new with the duo of Pike Motorworks and AVA Capitol Hill along E Pike, perhaps, best representing the mid-2010s the area’s preservation incentive-boosted rush to create block-filing mixed-use projects. The massively squat Broadstone Capitol Hill project at 10th and Union with its near 300 units is another example. The 2015ish development area also saw the same kind of jigsawing planned for the new project north of Cal Anderson — in 2014, CHS compared it to Tetris, however.
For now, the Carmel Partners plan is moving forward in the early permitting process with plans to begin Seattle’s public design process taking shape for later this year. No public comment is being collected yet on the plans but you can keep an eye on the project by tracking the address 112 10th Ave E using the city’s Shaping Seattle website.
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It’s absolutely insane to me that we’re limiting to 8 stories directly across the street from a new subway costing tens of billions of dollars of public investment.
another shill for neoliberalism pretending to be a “progressive”
a tenfold increase in residences isn’t enough? some people are really wild for density!
As someone who owns a home nearby, I find it more sad to see homes that (at one point, at least) could be owned by ordinary people, replaced with ones are owned exclusively by wealthy corporations.
In Vancouver, I believe around 50% of new housing by their rail extensions is for-sale.
Where’s the high-density housing being built that that people can own in Seattle? Or is the future of Capitol Hill a dystopian world in which everyone lives here solely by the grace of their corporate landlord?
The city codes made building condos a dangerous investment that were hard to finance or so I heard. Please talk to your City Clouncil to change that and maybe we’ll see more condos built again.
The B&B building was beautiful — it’s a shame to lose it — although its fate seemed sealed given the size of the plot.
I wasn’t certain if the B&B is in the mix. I see ownership records for a different developer and am checking in with them.
I do believe that’s 121 11th Ave E, which appears to be on the map shared in this post.
But I naturally defer to your journalistic inquiry!
Nope, you’re correct. Confirmed by the developer.
It was the prettiest little block on Capitol Hill.
I agree, it was a nice block. As was the 300 block of 11th Ave East, which I lived on for six years. But we built mass transit a block away. People, lots of them, need to live close to that transit in order to use it efficiently. So the house my son was born in gets torn down and replaced by an eight story building. I don’t like how it affects my personal story, but I completely understand that it is necessary to make our city more accessible to the many rather than the few.
Am I missing something? Shouldn’t the headline read ‘East of Cal Anderson….’. The map looks to me like the parcel is east of Cal Anderson Park.
I’ll screw up east and west, or north and south sometimes… but never north and east :)
Yeah, it is north. My bad.
Does this mean I can go steal their plants?
Speaking of which, this kind of density in the hands of relatively few absentee landlords with little responsibility to the neighborhood should translate into an increase in crime, especially given the polarization it symbolizes.
oh please. This does not represent polarization. A local architect and a west coast developer are doing what we all know needs to be done in an area proximate to mass transit. They are building housing for people to live in, when they aren’t riding light rail, shopping at nearby stores, and frequenting neighborhood restaurants. I look forward to seeing Broadway rebound as new residents arrive. It used to be so much better than it is now.
Whenever I want to experience Vibrancy I go to an Amazon delivery locker and watch the doors open and close.
That depends on if it is high end apartments, has a mix, or other. If the property makes money it will likely have good maintenance. If the property is a money loose (unlikely), the maintenance will suffer. That’s how it works. It not the owners who commit crimes in the neighborhoods, remember, they aren’t there.
If you can find parking.
Is there any new news on when the Capitol Hill H-Mart is opening ?
Too bad…and seems inevitable. What about all the hubbub that’s to happen on 15th Ave E?
Can anyone tell if the large trees on the east side of 10th between John & Denny are being removed?
I know the guy who sold 4 of those houses on Denny /10th in this project- he has lived in the neighbors for 45 years and absolutely sold out to these developers for fat AF cash- which let’s be real when you’re 85 yrs old how many millions do you need again?? it’s devastating to me that long time invested owners wouldn’t want to preserve the legacy and sell to people who want to live there instead of greedy hands , there will never be craftsman’s like that built again and the neighborhood many of us knew well and loved hard is long gone
In fairness, EVERYONE is eventually going to sell out to developers.
It’s only a question of whether you do it yourself, or whether you are giving the profit to someone else a few years (or decades) into the future.
People on this block haven’t been spending $1 mil+ to buy their neighbors’ home in order to preserve these single family homes until their deathbeds.
(And I do genuinely share your sense of loss for many of these homes.)