This time two years ago, former city council member
Peter
Steinbrueck was pushing a zoning package designed to transform downtown
Seattle. He envisioned remaking the urban core from a space dominated
by office buildings into a bustling residential center. His plan seems
to be working. Approximately 15,000 units are currently proposed to the
city or under construction, thousands of which are in apartment and
condo towers between Belltown and I-5. “I consider this to be the most
important work in my 10 years on the council,” he says.
But the zoning changes that allow developers to build taller
buildings and denser neighborhoods are also resulting in designs that
could inadvertently hinder the very urban vitality Steinbrueck, now
teaching sustainable architecture at the University of Washington,
sought to foster.
Since the Westin Hotel built a second cylindrical tower in 1982,
downtown Seattle has had only one set of matching buildings. But after
the new regulations took effect in April 2006, developers have
submitted proposals to build five more sets of residential twin towers.
Four of the sets will be constructed on six-to-eight-story, block-long
bases.
“A Popsicle stick on top of a podium is not good design to begin
with,” says Sharon E. Sutton, a professor of architecture at the
University of Washington. Twin towers—although providing needed
density—have the potential to become monotonous. But, more than
aesthetic, the towers’ close proximity to one another and their
block-long bases may darken the streets and discourage sidewalk
activity. “You can have tall building,” says Sutton, “but you have to
do it in a way that brings light and air into the city.”
“I fought tooth and nail with the development community to put more
light and air between the towers, to preserve views,” says Steinbrueck.
“But I didn’t always get the votes from the council.”
The recent zoning changes seem to be driving the new designs. The
new codes allow taller buildings than previously permitted, but they
also limit the floor area in high-rises from between 10,000 to 16,500
square feet.
Heron-Pagoda developer Steven Gestetner sums up the problem: “If
you’re going to have a lobby, it will eat up the entire ground level,”
he says. “You end up having to purchase additional property to build a
lobby… and when you’re done, you have room for two towers.”
The financiers of such projects reckon that if they buy a marginal
amount more land than is needed for the lower level of one building,
they can nearly double the number of sellable square feet by building
another. A direct relationship exists between the block-long base and
the twin-tower design: If developers want a second tower, they are
compelled to use a block-long footprint to house the required retail,
mechanical needs, and lobby for the buildings. In addition, developers
can use essentially duplicate designs for each building, thereby saving
expenses paying for architects.
The tallest pair of proposed buildings, the Heron-Pagoda Towers,
coincidentally, is directly across Fifth Avenue from the Westin. Down
the monorail line on Fifth Avenue, another set, called the Insignia
Towers, is expected to break ground in spring. “They are going to be a
relative mirror image of one another,” says Mark Oord of Vancouver,
BC–based Embassy Development. Within a mile are three more sets
ranging from 24 to 40 stories, including pairs on the corners of Second
Avenue and Virginia Street, Sixth Avenue and Lenora Street, and Denny
Way and Stewart Street.
Seattle already has a taste of this design. Seattle Heights
Condominiums—2600 Second Avenue—stands 25 stories,
including a six-story podium that rises straight from the sidewalk,
with retail at street level. The mass consumes the length of the block,
from Vine Street to Cedar Street, and a half block back to an alley.
Save for a second tower, it fits the block-long base design. Retail and
commercial businesses at Seattle Heights were closed or empty when I
visited in the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon. I waited on the
street for a pedestrian to walk by for five minutes. But nobody walked
by. One of the spaces, currently the Tandoori Hut, within the last
eight years has contained five restaurants, each one going out of
business.
“It’s too far to walk without a psychological break,” Sutton says of
the problem with block-long developments.
Council Member Sally Clark, as the current chair of the urban
development committee, has inherited the task of evaluating the code’s
implementation. “If we built into code [incentive for developers] to
buy extra space to build twins and make that the new de facto design,”
she says, “then we’ve lost one of our values—diversity of
building style.”
“The street level is most important,” says Clark, who plans to
examine the zoning’s impact this year. “The question to ask the
Department of Planning and Development is, ‘Are we seeing, as a result
of the zoning, any inadvertent outcomes?'” 