Tag Archives: design

With every chair empty in 2025, East Design Review Board seeks full slate of volunteers

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The East Design Review Board at a 2009 meeting (Image: CHS)

There is major turnover on the East Design Review Board responsible for evaluating proposed developments across Capitol Hill and nearby neighborhoods with the city looking to fill all five of the body’s seats for the new term starting next spring.

With each of the East board’s volunteer positions open in 2025, the city is seeking a business or landscape design profession representative, a design profession representative, a development profession representative, a local community representative, a local residential representative to complete the panel, one of eight empowered across the city to “evaluate the design of new buildings based on citywide and neighborhood-specific design guidelines.”

The five openings on the East board are part of 21 openings for terms starting in April 2025 across the city. It is the only board that will start completely fresh in April.

The Central Area Board is seeking only a business or landscape design profession representative to round out its mix. Continue reading →

In midst of public safety worries, Capitol Hill EcoDistrict hopes to help change the way neighborhood spaces are used — including activating the top of the massive Seattle Central parking garage

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Seattle Central used the top of its massive Harvard Ave parking garage as the setting for its pandemic-era graduation ceremonies — a new plan hopes to activate the garage’s top level space

Catenary lights above Nagle (Image: @blitzurbanism)

As community representatives and city officials hope to make strides in addressing public safety worries around Capitol Hill’s Pike/Pine and Broadway core and its popular Cal Anderson Park, an organization with deep neighborhood roots is helping to reshape streets and design in the area.

The Capitol Hill EcoDistrict has been working to increase sustainability and equity in the neighborhood for over a decade but its latest projects come as part of a large puzzle with some dire stakes.

“We have a bond to this neighborhood. We’re very deliberate in our work and specific to Capitol Hill,” said Donna Moodie, executive director of the EcoDistrict.

CHS reported here on the challenges facing Capitol Hill around Broadway between Union and Pine where the city says street crime and deadly drug use overlap at some of its highest levels. City officials are weighing initiatives for these areas that will include increased policing and prosecution as well as possible creation of a neighborhood ambassador program.

There are deadly consequences. The most recent example? 23-year-old Kenji Spurgeon, gunned down in an E Pine parking lot amid Pride weekend nightlife crowds.

Changing the way these streets look and feel is part of a longer –and hopefully more complete — path to making Capitol Hill safer. Continue reading →

Fifteenth Ave E fashion + flea markets: Punk Rock Flea Market makes Capitol Hill debut, Cuniform ‘styling agency’ joins block

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(Image: CHS)

This weekend, Seattle’s Punk Rock Flea Market will debut with an eclectic mix of music, food, arts and crafts, sneakers, skateboards, bondage gear, tattoos, prosthetic limbs, crystals, taxidermy, graffiti supplies, and fashion in its new short-term home on Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E.

The market will now share the block with another interesting Seattle fashion concern settling in for an indeterminate amount of time on this Capitol Hill commercial strip lined up for big changes.

Thursday night, stylist Colton Winger and the team of fashion consultants that make up Cuniform debuted a new 15th Ave E brick and mortar home for the “personal and interiors styling agency.” Continue reading →

Reminder: Design review for six-story Broadway Bait Shop block project this week

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Wednesday will bring the first public design review of a proposed new project to build a new six-story mixed-use development on the Broadway block home to Bait Shop.

In this first “early design guidance” round of review, the East Design Board will focus on the general concept and massing of the proposal while important details around materials and the final look and feel of the project will be hammered out in the second “recommendation” phase of the review. Continue reading →

Design review: Tree preservation, parking, and new housing — A 13th Ave project with something for everyone on Capitol Hill

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A new project planned for the 600 block of 13th Ave E will continue the area’s transition away from most of its remaining single family-style housing. This week, the project takes its first bow in front of the East Design Review Board.

Under the project, three adjacent 120(ish)-year-old houses and a detached garage on 13th between E Mercer and E Roy will be torn down. In their place will rise a four-story, 50-foot tall building with about 36 apartments, a trade officials in the housing squeezed city say is necessary for Seattle to address ongoing affordability and homelessness crises.

The developer, Leschi Lakeside Property Management, working with Kirkland-based Milbrandt architects, are proposing the usual three options for how the building might be shaped. As this meeting is the early design guidance phase, most details are focused on the basic massing and layout of the planned development.

All three proposals call for parking access roughly in the middle of the building, and therefore, mid-block, which is less than ideal, but really the only option. All three are roughly rectangular in shape. There are plans to plant new trees along western edge of the property – the back of the building – to give the existing neighbors more privacy. Continue reading →

Design review: Someday they’ll redevelop the abandoned E Olive Way Starbucks but first they’re building this 7-story mixed-use apartment building across the street

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Starbucks bailed on the street because they claimed the area has too much crime but that is not stopping plans for another major redevelopment along E Olive Way.

A group of two and three story buildings will make way for a seven-story mixed use project at 1661 E Olive Way under a development proposal set to come before the East Design Review Board this week.

CHS reported earlier this year as rumblings restarted after a massive 2019 real estate deal with Vancouver, Canada-based real estate investment and management company Low Tide Properties paying $21 million for the collection of commercial buildings including the former Fred Wildlife events space.

The four existing buildings span the block between Boylston and Belmont on the south side of Olive. The project area is currently occupied by the former Coldwell Banker building which fronts on Olive. It stretches along Boylston/Belmont to include the low-slung office/warehouse buildings and also includes the existing parking lot.

1661 E Olive Way

Design Review Early Design Guidance for a 7-story, 160-unit apartment building, with retail. Parking for 110 vehicles proposed. View Design Proposal  (7 MB)    

Review Meeting
December 14, 2022 5:00 PM

Webex Meeting Link: https://bit.ly/Mtg3039688

Listen Line: 206-207-1700 Passcode: 2483 030 7118
Comment Sign Up: https://bit.ly/Comment3039688
Review Phase
EDG–Early Design Guidance

Project Number

Planner: Theresa Neylon

In its place will rise a seven-story building with about 160 apartments and 2,400 square feet of ground level commercial space. The plan also calls for about 110 underground parking spots, an unusually high number for the neighborhood, doubly unusual for a building two blocks from the light rail station. The number of parking stalls has already drawn a public comment saying as much, and suggesting removing some of the stalls. Continue reading →

Design review: With ‘Aperture’ concept, plan for new Photographic Center Northwest building on 12th Ave includes 171 apartments

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The public design process to create a new home for arts nonprofit Photographic Center Northwest in a new seven-story mixed-use development on the site of the center’s 100-year-old 12th Ave building begins this week.

The Central Area Design Review Board is set to take up the first design proposals for the Focus on 12th Apartments development Thursday night. Plans call for 171 apartment units above the new photography center and underground parking for around 42 vehicles.

Design review: 900 12th Ave
Design Review Early Design Guidance for a 7-story, 171-unit apartment building with institution (Photographic Center Northwest) and retail. Parking for 42 vehicles proposed. View Design Proposal  (26 MB)    

Review Meeting
September 22, 2022 5:00 PM

Meeting: https://bit.ly/Mtg3039185

Listen Line: 206-207-1700 Passcode: 2484 459 1770
Comment Sign Up: https://bit.ly/Comment3039185
Review Phase: EDG–Early Design Guidance  See All Reviews
Project Number: 3039185  View Related Records
Planner: David Sachs

Developer Vibrant Cities told CHS earlier this year it expects the new building to offer market rate housing along with Seattle Mandatory Housing Affordability and Multifamily Tax Exemption factors that could add a few affordable units to the mix. There is also a possibility of working with nearby Seattle University to offer school-affiliated housing. Continue reading →

Stakeholder meetings to begin overhaul of Seattle’s design review process

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The first in a series of meetings of a stakeholders group convened to produce recommendations for speeding up the process and addressing economic and equity issues in Seattle design review will take place Wednesday.

Organized by the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections, the sessions will not be open to the public but will be recorded and made available by the city. You can also add your comments and feedback to the sessions planned to include architects, designers, and developers from across Seattle’s spectrum of market rate and affordable development as well as representatives from  SDCI and the Office of Planning and Community Development.

The city says the stakeholders group with SDCI, and OPCD will “conduct a Racial Equity Toolkit (RET) analysis of the city’s Design Review Program.

SDCI and OPCD have been tasked with providing a report to the Seattle City Council including the outcome of that analysis later this year. Continue reading →

What Capitol Hill’s new eight-story, mass timber City Market building — with corrugated steel and Japanese climbing vines — will look like

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(Image: Juno/Ennead Architects)

The eight-story, mass timber redevelopment of City Market will make a new home for the stalwart neighborhood grocer. It continues on its path through Seattle process this week with what could be the final design for the planned mixed-use project and new home for the longtime Capitol Hill grocery. The plan is slated to come before the East Design Review Board on Wednesday, February 23rd.

San Francisco-based property owner Juno has hired New York-based Ennead Architects to design the new building at the corner of E Olive Way and Bellevue. The existing City Market building, which dates to 1919 according to property tax records, will be demolished, along with its adjacent parking lot.

The new building will feature ground floor retail, topped with 98-residential units, including 58 studios, 21 “deep” one-bedrooms, 13 one-bedrooms and 5 two-bedrooms. The building will have the typical complement of amenities, including a rooftop deck. Continue reading →

Bookkeeping | Spotting patterns — and shaping more equitable neighborhoods — at 12th Ave’s Schemata Workshop

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Photos by Rod Huntress

By Kimberly Kinchen

From affordable housing at Cal Anderson-adjacent Station House to a Union Street pedestrian bridge on the Central Waterfront, designs from architecture studio Schemata Workshops are fixtures on the Hill and far beyond. Co-founder Grace Kim shared some favorite volumes with us for Bookkeeping, our occasional series on the books local businesses love so much they keep them in easy reach.

How does a book make it onto this shelf? Most of the books in the office are reference books. So books we’re using for precedents or looking at typologies — other built examples with similar characteristics — to see kind of what else people are thinking about. And sometimes it’s not even the same type, like we might be looking at a compact home, but we might look at libraries, and how they might use condensed storage. Sometimes we’re trying to capture look and feel. A lot of that we can do on the internet. So a lot of the books that are here are actually much, much older, just because they’re from a time when we couldn’t search those things on the internet. . . . I guess a big way these books show up is when we’re looking for more information than what you would find on the web. So we might be searching for high density housing in Europe and find one or two projects with just a picture or two. And so then trying to dive in a little deeper and understand the project, we might see if it’s published in a book somewhere. And that will lead to other similar projects. Then we can look at what’s happening outside our area. Continue reading →