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  • The street view of “downtown” Federal Way from proposed skyscraper development site.

From yesterday’s News Tribune:

Federal Way Mayor Skip Priest wants to reignite developer interest in a piece of city-owned downtown property after plans for a three-skyscraper project there collapsed.

Which of course raises the question: there’s a downtown Federal Way?

Not according to the Google Street View of the proposed site. Both the vacant lot and the surrounding neighborhood look kinda desolate, hardly the place you’d imagine investing $300 million into a condominium/hotel/office/retail project that would have included two 45-story towers plus a 35-story companion. I mean, Jesus… it looks like the site itself is ready to fall through, let alone the financing.

So what could possibly attract investors to an obviously dubious investment like this?

To attract investors, Twin Development says it is using Federal Way’s designation last fall by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service as a “regional center.” That program grants foreign investors permanent legal-resident status in exchange for their putting money into local developments.

Ah, I see. A federal program that subsidizes local development by selling green cards to wealthy foreigners. I guess you can’t blame Federal Way for pursuing downtown development the, um, federal way.

9 replies on “Downtown Development the Federal Way”

  2. Federal Way IS a regional center. It may not be very dense, but there are a million people, maybe two, in the catchment area there. I’ve been telling you for some time now — we live in LA. This is how it happens. Federal Way is already in many ways well advanced of where Bellevue was 20 years ago. Plop a few skyscrapers there, and next thing you know, it’s solid city from here to Olympia. Get used to it. The population down Federal Way way is growing by leaps and bounds, much faster than Seattle. They’ll be 100,000 in the city limits soon, and Kent and Auburn and Tacoma and Puyallup are just next door.

    Federal Way is also more diverse racially and economically than Seattle.

  3. In Canada they give you citizenship if you invest 1 million and stay for a few years.

    Mind you, Canada has lower unemployment, a growing GDP, and doesn’t let the rich get gifts from the poor.

    (or was that tax cuts for rich – same thing)

  4. The site is pretty desolate, but it is right across 320th from the mall and a couple blocks from pacific highway. The is also a wallmart and other shopping just north of it. Not a bad location. Lots of traffic nearby with easy access.

  6. All those empty newly remodled buidings in SODO are owned by a company that does the same thing. They are called American Life because thays what they sell. The driver isn’t real estate demand but the number of wealthy foreigners who want to buy a green card. The byproduct is that they have moved a large part of the industrial part of sodo out and replaced it with emty stores that I suppose will fill up and create jobs one day.

  8. “…there are a million people, maybe two, in the catchment area there.”

    Does that catchment area, whatever that is, happen to include Seattle and Tacoma?

  9. Can we stop using Google widgets. Every time I click on my Slog bookmark, the google API decides to hijack the scroll bar and instead of dropping me at the top of the SLOG, it scrolls me all the way down to this post.

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