Now that the Denny’s has been demolished, Benaroya Companies will dismiss its lawsuit against the city’s Landmarks Board, fidelity 401k reports Crosscut’s Knute Berger. No surprise there. Meanwhile, a Seattle PI reporter standing in front of the demolished Denny’s says she “couldn’t find one happy passerby

I wish the interlopers and their sportscars driving up the rents would move back to Mexifornia.

Biff, thanks for all of the information. Very helpful, quite informative.

biff - good overview of the process, thx

Suthii - I'm start to really groove to your tune. A bit sharp, sometimes antagonistic (for entertainment's sake?) but obviously a Ballard neighbor.

I've always liked the smartass, the devil's advocate, a good debate...

"Someone who pretends to be gainfully employed but actually spends all day surfing the web in a coffee shop."

Who said I was gainfully employed? Thanks to Mr. Dow and Mr. Nasdaq, I can take it pretty easy and luckily the good folks in Ballard seem to agree which is why they are so busy tearing down the dives so I can have more wine bars.

"Suthii"

Someone who pretends to be gainfully employed but actually spends all day surfing the web in a coffee shop.

"Greed doomed Denny's"

Another knuckle head who thinks socialism should only be applied to other people's property, not his/her own.

Here is how it works in brief:
- zoning usually requires commercial on the first floor (NC- whatever height 40/65/80 etc.)

- restaurants on 1st floor cause vents and shafts to go to the roof changing the floor plans above

- Few HOA's want restaurants on 1st floor for smells etc.

- in the 1st cycle of these spaces low yield tennants move in (nail salons etc.) on short term leases.

- as the neighborhood achieves critical mass higher paying tenants are willing to move in (wine bars etc.) based on the demographic spike, but this takes some time typically 18+ months

- Mix is determined by demographic studies
(family, incomes of area etc.) and comparison properties (Hjarta, Noma -ick-)

- The fund that buys properties is made up of individual investors (401k's, unions, teachers, etc.) The fund managers buy the property at market rate (in this case truly a market rate as it was a pubic auction)

- The members of the fund are betting by the time the project comes online, the rents/sales price will be above the auction price level of a couple years earlier and hence get a return.

- Currently construction costs are outrageous, beating inflation at least 10 fold (this has been the case for 4+ years) requiring higher sales prices/rental rates for the end product to reach the required return for the managers -hence expensive units.

-Community benefits through economic externalities and ripple effects -the workers eating at restaurants, local engineering firms, architectural, contracting and job creation

-Banks are great 1st floor tenants as they are quite when residents are home much like churches are busy only a couple hours a week.

-much more but you start to get the point

I wouldn't want a bank on the first floor either. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I wouldn't want to worry about someone breaking into my place to break into the bank. I've probably seen too many movies! LOL

Sheila,
I think that's why most condo's these days are not built out for resturants on the retail level. It's hard enough to sell 2nd floor condos, even wthout a noisy resturant underneath. And a resturant that closes at 11 is still cleaning up for at least an hour.

I don't know if anyone else went to that Denny's at 3 a.m., but I have and I can tell you that no one who buys a condo in the new building will want a 24 hour diner on the first floor. Maybe something that stays open until 11 or 12 will work OK.

What a surprise, the folks hanging around Denny's in the middle of a work day didn't support its demolition. No doubt they were upset that Ballard's favorite tagging and urination spot was about to be ruined by 'yuppies' who insist on using bathrooms.

I gotta believe that parking lot space gets used for the building, Joshua. The plan I saw on calls fro 400+ parking spaces, and I doubt that'd be anything but underground.

I like the idea, though: "Ballard Place". With a Tom Douglas restaurant in the main street level :)

Given the different options in the slide from the article (Thanks Geeky Swedes!) I'm sure a partial rebuild was one of the options. At one point there were some drawings of rebuilds that used parts of the original building (namely the roof) and a redone interior.

On a total side-note, I wonder how a location like a pacific place would do in that location? Kind of a vertical mall. Given that the location includes that large parking lot behind, I think the footprint would be big enough.

That seems to be all about what to do with the current (well, old) building, not about what is viable given a tear down. Am I missing something?

You can see some of Benaroya's financial analysis in an earlier story we did, here:

http://www.myballard.com/2008/05/21/board-sides...

Well, I certainly don't know all of the things that drive "the mix" in mixed-use, some of what you say does make sense- as a good a set of theories as any!

I wonder though, what context they were speaking in when they said it could not be profitable as a resturant? Could they have meant as a restaurant *on it's own*? Or in trying to incorporate the old building in to the new?

Goodness knows there are plenty of restaurants with residential space above them- just look downtown. Be interesting to see how this all turns out. At least good restaurants are not something we lack in Ballard!

Joel,
Yes, when the Benaroya folks appealed the landmark status they said it could not be profitable as a resturant.

When you buy land for that much money you have to charge vertically, it has to be a multi- story building that you can rent or sell. So that gives you two choices: Offices or Condos/apartments. Condos make more money and are a safer bet because once you find someone to buy it, it's not your problem anymore. Since no one wants to live on the first floor, you have to make the first floor retail.

This part I'm not so sure about, but I believe that make the first floor spots able to be converted into a resturant takes extra work (health rules, etc), plus people on the second floor don't like the idea of a resturant under them whereas they don't mind retail since it closes earlier. So the most effective choice is to make it a retail space and NOT a resturant capable space.

Since these retail spaces have high rents and not much storage they generally have to be service retail because they are the only busineses that can afford the rent.

All these factors are what drive land purchasers in Ballard to make condos with banks or nail salons on the first floor. It's the most profittable set of choices.

Since I bank online and don't do my nails, it converts places like Ballard into a retail dead-zone to me. It would be interesting to see if there was some way to encourage condo buildiers to house more diverse retail and resturantes (tax breaks, etc...).

Isn't it 200 and some units? Can we assume that these would see for on the order of $300,000? And isn't 200 * $300,000 60 million? Seems like the cost of the land + the cost of building + legal costs would be sufficiently covered! Am I being naive?

Was there something I missed? I have seen two references now to some statement about a restaurant not being viable due to the cost of the land. Did the Benaroya/Rhapsody folks say this at some point? I'm no Donald Trump, but I'd love to understand because it seems to me that a good restaurant there could do quite well- at least as well as a bunch of mixed retail places (the afformented and tiredlessly referred to nail salons, tanning places, subways, etc.).

Mae's and the Egg Nest are both pretty tiny.

But what I really wanted to say is that everyone may be tired of hearing the "whining" but honestly, without people bitching about stuff, nothing ever gets done. And I think the real problem is - people are tired of losing places, even if they don't patronize them all the time, to new places that they will never use at all. Yes, 267 people total will use the new condos (maybe) but even a modest estimate would dictate that that many people patronized Denny's each week.
I don't care so much about Denny's being there or not, but I'd love to see another (inexpensive) 24 hour diner go in there, or anything more interesting and useful than another bland, mixed use condo thing.
Yeah, I know, a diner won't be profitable because of the cost of the land, but is it really our fault that Benaroya chose to buy a really expensive chunk of property? Maybe if they had waited, they would have gotten it a little cheaper.
I'm pretty sure too, that they can probably write off a lot of any losses they may take on this anyway.

>> Like it or not, we have very little control over population growth, only how we accommodate that growth. <<

Could not agree more!

>> Like it or not, we have very little control over population growth, only how we accommodate that growth. <>I never saw people lined -up and waiting to get into Denny’s for breakfast like they do at Mae’s Cafe or the Egg’s Nest on Greenwood.<<

You got that right. Denny's is crap to begin with, but that was the single worst Denny's on Earth.

I never saw people lined -up and waiting to get into Denny's for breakfast like they do at Mae's Cafe or the Egg's Nest on Greenwood.

I've only lived in Ballard for two years so I don't have the perspective that others have. However, I though that the Denny's building was pretty ugly, especially given its prominent location. I can envision much better uses for that space. I understand why long-time residents are not happy with the fast pace of development and the lack of creativity. However, it is better to build in Ballard, than in distant suburbs for many reasons. Like it or not, we have very little control over population growth, only how we accommodate that growth. It would be nice if infrastructure, like public transit and open spaces, kept up with development.

I'm already sick of hearing about it! It's gone, let's move on.

I'm not saying that the vast majority wasn't in favor of the demo- I'm sure a real survey would indicate that they were. But, her survey *may not* doesn't accurately represent the views seen on the cited blogs because anybody that ever gets anywhere close to saying anything in favor of the Manning's gets absolutely panned by the trolls of the world! Sometimes it gets downright nasty! Who wants that?

So come on, let's stop the picking on for a moment and at least allow for the fact that there could be (gasp) some people that are sad/disappointed/whatever to see it gone for any of a variety of reasons!

Now of course, the reporter is trying to sensationalize the story. Surprise surprise. That's what they do! I was interviewed by KOMO TV in front of Edith's house when I took my two daughters to drop off flowers and the reported tried to go the "you didn't even know Edith, but here you are leaving flowers. Why?" angle. Thats what they do.

But the fact is, the blogosphere is full of people that hide behind fake online names which gives them license to be insensitive, and sometimes not real nice.

When was the presser there? Because I, like most professionals work during business hours, so if they were doing the study at 2p I was at work. 2am -I was asleep. In either of the aforementioned hours, I'm sure residents of the Denny's would be there at those hours however.