Wrecking Ball

Capitol Hill developer Liz Dunn, who specializes in restoring
pre-1940s buildings like the 1926 Piston & Ring building on 12th
Avenue, signed off on a letter to city council member Tom Rasmussen in
March calling for a moratorium on demolition in the Pike/Pine
neighborhood.

In the letter, Dunn and other steering committee members of the
Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council (PPUNC), a group of business
owners and residents, argued that the pace of new development is
destroying the neighborhood’s character. “The City of Seattle must act
quickly if the essence of the Pike/Pine Neighborhood is to be
preserved,” the group wrote. And, in a separate letter Dunn sent to
fellow PPUNC members in March, she wrote, “Old buildings can support
lower rents, attract a variety of unique retailers, restaurants, and
arts users, and in turn attract people to visit from outside the
neighborhood.” Also in March, the National Trust for Historic
Preservation named Dunn the consulting director of Preservation Green
Lab, a national preservation-advocacy group.

But while Dunn is seeking to halt demolition of old buildings, she
is also planning to knock down one she owns and build a new development
in its place.

A decade ago, Dunn purchased the Chop House, a practice space for
musicians that occupies an old, two-story masonry building on 11th
Avenue and East Pine Street. Since the mid-’80s, its 30 studios have
served as rehearsal rooms for hundreds of bands, including the
Presidents of the United States of America.

But now Dunn wants to build a 60-unit apartment building on the
site.

“We are going to have to find somewhere else to practice,” says
Blake Wolf, a guitarist for Immiserate, a death-metal band that
practices at Chop House. The building is currently one of only two
large rehearsal spaces on Capitol Hill. Although there are several
other studios in South Seattle, Wolf says, “It’s inconvenient for
people who don’t have cars to get down there.”

Dunn, who hopes to find a new location for Chop House, says there’s
no inconsistency in demolishing her old building while advocating for a
moratorium on the demolition of other such buildings.

“I don’t think every building needs to be saved nor should be,” Dunn
says.

Little of the Chop House building’s original facade remains and the
ground-floor rooms were gutted before Dunn bought it; moreover, the
walls are constructed from hollow clay blocks. “What the city would
require to seismically retrofit it would be essentially rebuilding it
from scratch,” Dunn says.

The paradox, it seems, is that people like the idea of preserving
old buildings in Pike/Pine. But in practice, even the most die-hard
preservationists run up against economic realities.

Last year, in an effort to encourage property owners to save older
buildings in the Pike/Pine neighborhood, Council Member Rasmussen
launched a Pike/Pine-preservation study and proposed limiting the size
of new buildings and giving developers incentives to add on to old
buildings instead of tearing them down. However, the city’s Department
of Planning and Development sent the proposal back without those
provisions, prompting Dunn and PPUNC’s call for a moratorium on
demolition.

Rasmussen says he plans to introduce legislation that would limit
the size and scale of new buildings in the Pike/Pine corridor later
this spring.