- South Downtown neighborhoods being considered for redevelopment
What’s the perfect height when it comes to redeveloping South Downtown? No one seems to know.
The Seattle Department of Planning and Development’s recommendation to the City Council is to build higher. Additional density or height, DPD says, is likely to yield great public benefits.
But while residents of Little Saigon give DPD’s plan a thumbs-down, developers in Pioneer Square are demanding even taller height limits (DPD’s Livable South Downtown plan also includes redevelopment for the stadium area and the International District, but so far there’s been no vocal opposition to the upzoning proposed there).
“It’s to be expected,” said Susan McLain, the DPD planner working on the project. “People from different interest groups are going to be lobbying for different changes.”
On one end of the spectrum is Quang H. Nguyen, founding-member of the Washington Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce, who feels that taller buildings in Little Saigon would usher in gentrification and drive out small independent businesses. Nguyen and other Little Saigon neighbors are gearing up to protest DPD’s plan at a Nov. 22 public hearing at the Wing Luke Museum.
At the other end is longtime Seattle developer William Justen who wants buildings in Pioneer Square to rise as tall as 180 ft., 30 ft. higher than the maximum height proposed in the area, McLain said. Justen did not return calls for comment. “He has a number of ideas,” said Council Member Sally Clark. “He told me that unless you give someone 180 ft. there’s not enough return.” Clark said that Justen only wants to build up on non-historic sites and parking lots.
Clark said that if Little Saigon neighbors had been tepid about DPD’s plan when they first saw it, they vociferously oppose it now. “They are scared there will be mass displacement,” she said.
“You can’t go from a 25-foot to a 150-foot building,” Nguyen said, referring to the maximum allowed height in the plan. “Developers are eyeing the area because it’s closer to downtown. Even though the economy is bad now, development will happen, and when it does DPD will favor large development over small development.”
Nguyen wants the maximum height for commercial buildings to be 65 ft. and 20 ft. more for residential ones. He is lobbying for mixed-use affordable housing, a feature McLain said developers would be asked to provide if they wanted 150 ft. buildings.
“Businesses are barely hanging in there,” Nguyen said. “We need to keep the character of Little Saigon alive by supporting its businesses—people don’t come to Seattle for Macy’s or the chain stores, they come here for the small, independent stores.”
What poor schmuck can they possibly befuddle into building in a derelict bum-ridden area that is now proposed as the location of a band of tent-dwelling homeless people. At some point, the Seattle Con wears thin.
I assume “150 story” is a misprint.
Much less important than height is the size of the footprint and how it relates to the street. The city should allow developers to build to 180 feet if they promise to build to the sidewalk, with 80% or more of the ground floor devoted solely to retail storefronts no more than 16 feet wide. And no building should be allowed to occupy more than 1/8 of a standard (south of University) block.
@1, the Nickelsville site is a long way south of the area discussed here and not even remotely relevant to this topic. Your suburbanism is showing.
“What’s the perfect height when it comes to redeveloping South Downtown?”
Unlimited.
Where is Randy Newman when we need him?
“Short buildings got no reason to live?”
Businesses in Little Saigon are failing because their customers live too far away (south beacon hill) from Little Saigon and have found more convenient alternatives closer to where they live or can’t afford/don’t want what the merchants are selling.
@5
Does not compute with NIMBYs.