After hearing complaints from city officials and transit advocates calling for more density in the Roosevelt neighborhood, as well as Roosevelt residents’ objections, the city has beefed up its density plan to include 85-foot building heights directly adjacent to the future Roosevelt light rail station while limiting building heights to 65 feet in other parts of the neighborhood as residents requested—such as along NE 65th Street between 12th and 15th Avenues NE.
“These modifications will help add potential for more housing and retail in targeted locations within a short walk of the planned light rail station, including Sound Transit owned properties and three blocks of underutilized land east of the planned light rail station,” writes Mayor Mike McGinn on his Livejournal blog today. “The rezone proposals support better uses of vacant property in close proximity to the light rail station.”
But residents aren’t thrilled with all aspects of the new plan. “The sticking point for the neighborhood remains the 65-foot building heights in front of Roosevelt High School,” explains Jim O’Halloran, chair of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association’s Land Use committee. Residents want to preserve views of the historic high school. “The 85-foot heights to the west, that’s a significant change, but it’s something that we felt could work with.”
The mayor has committed to sending Roosevelt zoning legislation down to the city council this month.
In total, 25 rezones are proposed for integrating a light rail station into the heart of the neighborhood, mostly around Roosevelt Way NE and NE 65th Street. The proposed rezones cover 17.5 acres of land.
Once completed, the Roosevelt transit station will serve an estimated 8,000 people a day, according to Sound Transit.
“preserve views of the historic high school”????? So there are a few people in the upper floors of a few tall buildings that are worried about losing their view of the high school?
Quite frankly, if you’ve ever been a student at Roosevelt, or a parent of a student at Roosevelt, like me, the whole noise issue from all the high school kids driving in and being noisy is a great reason to have even HIGHER heights around it.
Should have stuck with 40 story buildings.
It’s 65 feet–retail plus 4-5 residential. That’s not going to be out of scale with the high school building.
That must be one gorgeous high school.
Any low income housing in this development?
if we can’t put density on the north side of a major arterial and south of a deeply set back public building, where can it be put? are the acupunture clinics and junk shops worried there will be too much foot traffic?
The real question is whether or not my view of the hideous neon cross on top of the church by the Park and Ride is going to be obstructed. It’ll really take away from all of my profane, blasphemous and otherwise unholy activities if Jesus can’t see me do it anymore.
If you build anything there, the earth-saving space laser that’s built into Roosevelt HS won’t be able to fire accurately.
Do you want to die an asteroid-related death, Seattle? NO!
Why even 65ft?
The state needs to build wide, not high.
@7: Seriously. What kind of “compromise” is this?
“We can let you build slightly higher density “adjacent” to the $300 million subway station we insisted on putting in that location… but not across the street!!”
Roosevelt neighborhood interests actively fought for the centralized station location — which is the correct choice from a pedestrian standpoint, even though it came at the expense of walking distance to the Green Lake business district. If they turn into zero-growth NIMBYs now, they’re doing it on our dime!
@4 yes, it is, actually.
@8 the proposal has that as future mixed residential, so you can probably still see it for a few decades.
We’re replacing it with a Trident spearing glowing meatballs above a nest of LED illuminated spaghetti soon, once the Church of the FSM finishes buying that property.