Before Seattle’s development bubble burst like a fat boil, Seattle was up in arms about townhouses. Specifically, people were pissed about the vast majority of near-identical townhouses, which defended themselves from neighbors with tall fences and wide, concrete auto courts. So last year, the mayor and city council set out to improve the designs while ensuring that building townhouses remained lucrative.
The mayor instructed the Department of Planning and Development to expand its design-review program. Basically, under the plan, if a developer wants to build a townhouse, he or she would have to let DPD check out the designs first. Here was my take on the proposal last year:
I’m tepid to the idea. It would be an onerous process for the city and developers (there are thousands of townhouses to review each year), but it wouldn’t necessarily reduce the repeating problems with Seattle’s townhouses, such as: four-pack housing separated by pedestrian-hostile auto-courts, living spaces that start on the second floor, and foreboding structural overhangs. Design review could put lipstick on those pigs—but the council needs to revise the multi-family code to require, among other things, shared pedestrian-friendly open space or row housing without several garages or driveways facing the street.
It’s all but certain that Seattle’s building boom will come roaring back. And when it does, supply will be short and demand will be high. Owners of dilapidated old houses will rush to convert their properties into townhouses. Do you want your new neighbors to live in cute row houses, or the four-pack, gabled-roof suburbs-in-the-city promoted by current building codes? Frankly, as much as I like DPD staff, the department routinely rubber stamps godawful designs and, unless city law bans the worst of the designs, I doubt a cursory review would change much. But I’m open it.
DPD will present its ideas at a meeting tonight in the Bertha Knight Landes room of Seattle City Hall, 600 4th Avenue. Doors at 5:30 p.m. and presentation at 6 p.m. More info is here.
In this regard Kent’s City planners may be ahead of the curve. They are currently looking at forms based architecture as a universal guideline for redevelopment of Kent’s East Hill.
Thanks Dom,
Everyone would surely want the opinion of an Asswipe Punk about the esthetics of their townhouse before it was built…
“gabled-roof suburbs-in-the-city”
ha! that is the best description of those townhouses i’ve heard yet.
It seems like every time I walk in that building, I see a guy who has had his dick up my ass. It’s awkward.
you’re either going to require design review for ALL L-zone development or the shit is going to continue. you can put a rainscreen on it & paint it burnt orange & black but that doesn’t change the basic siteplan. which is, unfortunately, extremely efficient.
Baltimore is full of row houses of varying size. We’re not in one, but the neighborhoods behind us and to our south are basically row house ‘hoods. Nearby is a new development of row houses that are fenced off and courtyarded. It doesn’t fit in at all and actually just feels stupid. WTF do people have against walking out their front doors to, you know, the street?
What I (and, I think a majority of Seattleites) would like: no public subsidy for private townhouse development in the housing levy!
Time will tell, of course, but I don’t think the fourplex townhouses will stand the test of time. They look OK when they’re new, but it will just take one jerk to bring an entire fourplex down.
Plus, a lot of those driveways are just impossible. The garages are going to become storage, and eventually someone will get the bright idea to turn them into an extra bedroom or something tacky like that.
Townhouses = equal density. They also provide lower cost housing.
@ 9) I totally agree with you. Townhouses are a great building type for increasing density and making home owning affordable to more poeple. But, considering that economics provides impetus to make townhouses so prolific, we shold consider carefully the building codes that apply to them and make sure they promote good, walkable neighborhoods.
Ms. Vel-DuRay, once again you are right on the money.
Actually, many townhomes are built on lots that could support small apartment or condo buildings if we did not require the builder to build and the buyer to buy, that parking space in an expensive underground garage. So lots of times you see a townhouse, it is a less-dense use than the building envelope allows. And btw why are we calling them townhouses when they are not like townhouses in all other cities ? And are really ugly multiplexes? Town houses don’t have garages (usu.) and they are on street to alley lots and they often have an apt. above or one below, or both, and they have stoops and porches and bay windows and nice facades. And they make a row. And they have bigger setbacks than what we have here, my god that one at what 47 and 11th with the fenced off front? Yuck. What we have are just 3 story “buildings,” or you could call them, “sheds.”
Why grace them with the name townhouse?
I live in one – and I like it.
No car, the garage, of course is storage and will become living space soon.
You puffed up critics of housing you cannot afford are funny.
Mommies basement is cool to rent, I guess, or the illusion of fancy old buildings renting cheap on the Hill….
Know all the neighbors and have a little community in the works – so something bad about that?
I kinda think the city should butt out and let markets and customers decide a lot.
Of course, the outside color and cut of the gable are of PRIME importance to some self appointed building code loony critics.
Well, I don’t live in mommy’s basement, and I haven’t rented an apartment on Capitol Hill since the Clinton administration. I’m one of those unfortunate souls who bought a real house – one with a yard and a basement – ages ago.
And I’m glad you have a community that works for you. I hope it stays that way, and I hope you have a homeowner’s association, and are not just relying on the goodwill of your neighbors. Otherwise, it cam become a real problem if one of the units becomes a poorly managed rental, or if someone who doesn’t want to be part of your “community” moves in, or if some big ugly maintenance issue comes up.
I’m not anti-townhome by any stretch – but I think, for the sake of the neighborhoods they are built in, they need special attention from the city, and owners need to be aware of what they are buying into.
“Do you want your new neighbors to live in cute row houses, or the four-pack, gabled-roof suburbs-in-the-city promoted by current building codes?”
Um, is it up to me to decide how my neighbors live?
Didn’t think so.
My, you’re a strange one.