Images from the demolition permitting application
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Redevelopment plans are back in the wash for a new project that will demolish E Olive Way’s All Seasons Cleaners.
Back in 2018, the then-busy drive thru laundry and home to one of the Hill’s busiest little weekend flea markets was being lined up for a project that would have risen seven stories and created around 45 apartments, and 3,200 square feet of retail just off Broadway — but longtime business and property owners the Kim family opted not to sell, putting any redevelopment on hold.
Four years later following the pandemic, the opening of hundreds of new apartments above Capitol Hill Station nearby, and an important land use change, plans are back in motion for a building that can now rise eight stories thanks to the Mandatory Housing Affordability zoning changes.
The new project is moving forward with permitting underway for demolition of the 1930s built commercial building and construction. Plans from architects Tsuga Studio would create around 75 apartments above 3,300 square feet of commercial or food and drink space below. Only a short walk from the busy light rail facility and the network of public transit systems that feed it, the new building is being planned with no motor vehicle parking.
All Seasons has remained open through much of the pandemic.
UPDATE: As a longtime cleaners facility, the site will likely require years-long decontamination efforts and soil remediation work like the effort that has long been underway on 15th Ave E at the site of the Hilltop Service Station and its planned redevelopment.
The All Seasons project comes after a recent tragedy at the site. Brent Wood, 31, was found beaten to death on the pavement near the cleaners building behind the Broadway Rite Aid early on the morning of Thursday, March 3rd.
The curving E Olive Way has mostly seen bursts of smaller redevelopment efforts in comparison to the larger apartment projects rising near the light rail station along Broadway. Much of the development has been commercial including the introduction of two new pot stores in recent years. Larger projects include the six-story building that replaced B&O Espresso and in the works plans for an eight-story, laminate timber development that will create new apartments above a new space for the much loved City Market. Meanwhile, the $21 million deal for Vancouver, Canada-based real estate investment and management company Low Tide Properties to acquire half an acre of commercial properties along E Olive Way lurks as a likely center of future redevelopment activity on the street.
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Love it! Two minute walk to the train, walkable to almost every shop you need, there’s no better place to have tons of apartments with no parking.
Just tapping my toe waiting on development announcements on the rest of multiple currently single story commercial properties along Olive between Broadway and downtown.
Great news on a coming improvement to the neighborhood. I hope the Lee’s did well out of this sale. Glad there’s no parking planned in this dense part of the hill!
Sad to see it go, but looking forward to the businesses that’ll replace it.
My concern is actually finding commercial tenants. From the looks of the transit development buildings on broadway, those spaces aren’t filling as quickly as anyone would’ve hoped.
There may be no parking but people will still own cars. Good luck with this.
We can keep building parking for new buildings but we have a limited roadway capacity which is the ultimate limiting factor for increasing the number of vehicles in the city. (ignoring the minor issue of destruction of the planet of course). I for one live on the hill because I can walk or take transit for nearly all my daily needs and am not interested in added roadway widths here.
Such a shame we can’t get more ownership housing within that 2 minute walk of the train.
Hopefully they will give the community more information about the PCE and TCE contamination at the site. Future residents deserve to know about potential vapor intrusion of carcinogens.
Soil remediation will indeed be required. I should have noted. Will update
this was a poignant reminder of how broadway and the hill used to be, but I can’t say that its value as that outweighs its value as much needed housing. I’ll miss the break it gave from taller buildings in the area but ultimately this block’s location is too key to leave to 1-story small businesses.
Awesome!
This is great – and I hope businesses will move in soon. There’s so much density, but no great grocery options (no Met Market?); or new dining options.
Hoping to see those move in as pandemic becomes endemic
There are 2 QFCs a 7 minute walk from this location, a Safeway up the hill, an HMart at light rail (if it ever opens), and 2 minimarts down Olive Way. Trader Joe and Central Coop are a 15 minute walk away. There’s even a Whole Foods and an Amazon Go within reasonable walking distance.
I’ve always thought Capitol Hill is one of the best areas when it comes to food shopping options. If someone really needs an upscale grocery, there are lots of neighborhoods that can accommodate them.
“public spaces belong to people” said there are no “great” options and he/she is right. QFC and Safeway are mediocre stores with often terrible customer service, but I’m hopeful that HMart will qualify as “great.”
I am curious how these buildings do (vacancy rate) without parking compared to ones that do. The city seems to assume that car owners and public transportation users are totally separate groups. I know a lot of people who own cars who also often take public transportation. Since off street parking is pretty much non-existent in this area, that group would not be interested in living here.
You seem to think that the city is banning parking. It’s not. Nothing is preventing a developer from building parking. The city is just allowing the property developer, who arguably has the biggest stake in whether the project succeeds or fails, to respond to the market as appropriate without artificially requiring features that might or might not be needed.
Yes, but developers are opting out of providing parking because they make more money that way. They could care less about the negative impact of that decision on the neighborhood.
Like most things, there are tradeoffs involved.
Allowing housing without parking considerably lowers the cost of construction
–> which lowers the point at which developers break even
–> which makes it more likely that a project will get built
–> which increases housing supply
–> which makes it more possible for people to live close to where they work and play
–> which means fewer people have to drive and park in the neighborhood day to day
–> which improves quality of life in the neighborhood
(positive impact).
Sure, there will likely be a few people trying to park on the street; but there’s so little parking around there anyway that the relative negative impact seems small to me?
Earnest question here – Capitol Hill is a great place to live (or is becoming so once again), but also to visit. People come from all over the area for the night life especially. Where are they supposed to park? I feel like a lot of people are overlooking that part of the equation.
Great question.
I would answer it thusly:
1) take transit
2) there’s a huge number of existing pay spots in surface lots and apartment building garages.
Just like it works in most great cities :)
Pay spots and surface lots are becoming a thing of the past, and as we can see from this example, so are apartment building garages. The ones still in existence are in heavy demand or expensive. Most great cities have parking garages, which downtown Seattle has many of but Capitol Hill only one I can think of by Seattle Central.
I don’t mind less traffic, but my thoughts go out to tourists (a huge source of income and tax dollars), people who don’t live on the hill but work here (transit doesn’t always work for them, especially for people with children) or visitors to people living on Capitol Hill.
Perhaps they could still require parking in the new buildings, but just less of it…say for example a number or parking spaces equal to 25% of the buildings units. Just a thought.
There are 15 separate hourly offstreet paid parking facilities within three blocks of E Pike and 11th ave.
They have also made that decision because many renters dont want to pay extra to have a parking space. Why? Because they don’t have a car. Developers want to make money. If people will pay for underground parking to offset the cost of building the parking (and if the physical cite itself will allow constructing a parking garage-sometimes it does not) developers will build the parking. It’s expensive, and requires lots of dirt removal, which complicates construction in tight urban areas like this cite. The developer here is likely building what their targeted consumer wants (an apartment with no parking) to meet the consumers expectations and make money in the process.
I think it’s very positive. I’d love a neighborhood with no off-street parking, in fact.
If SLU didn’t include off-street parking, we wouldn’t have regional traffic jams every day (back when the offices were open at least).
But do you realize that adding parking to the building also has negative impacts on the neighborhood? (More parking induces more driving and congestion on the streets.) Also, having cars crossing busy sidewalks coming and going from the apartment parking garage reduces the attractiveness for those walking on the sidewalks.
It sounds like a private corporation is willing to bet a large amount of money that it’s a better investment to *not* build parking. I mean, it’s not any city government agency deciding not to build parking here?
So it seems like this is the developer’s problem if the vacancy rate is higher, no?
According to censusreporter.org, there are 56,000 renter households in the city of Seattle with no car. So that’s the size of the market that they are aiming at. Its not the whole market; Seattle has about 190,000 renter households, so its 30% of it, and it is a poorer segment, but its decent-sized in its own right.
Interesting data! But given that the 30% is poorer (on average), how many of them will be able to afford an apartment in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, where rents are quite high? Why wouldn’t a developer target the 70% who are more likely to afford such an apartment (those who own a car)?
@kermit, I’m a little confused –
seattle is 30% renter (poorer), 70% homeowner (less poor), so developers making apartments should target homeowners?
Also, I rent out several apartments very close by that don’t have off-street parking.
I can’t say there’s been any struggle finding qualified and motivated renters below the $2500/month-ish price point.
When I had a chance to invest ~$70K or so to renovate and add an additional off-street parking spot, I ultimately punted on it because I couldn’t justify the investment based on the numbers.
I presume these folks (who I assume know much more than me as a low-key hobbyist landlord) have reached the same conclusion.