Tonight is the Early Design Guidance meeting for a plot of empty land at 8022 15th Ave NW.
Developers plan to build a four-story building with 48 residential units, three live-work units and 39 parking spots. At the meeting, the design team will present information about the area and the property.
Above is a look at one option the design team plans to show at tonight’s meeting. The public and Design Review Board will offer comments about the proposal. The entire presentation can be seen here (.pdf). The meeting will be held at the Ballard High School Library (1418 NW 65th St) at 8 p.m.
Early Design Guidance meeting for vacant land
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It needs more underground parking. May I suggest a larger number? Perhaps 86? 87?
enough with the parking!
I don’t think this building looks residential. to me, it screams ‘dentist office’
Anything to improve the blight that is 15th NW!!!
Wow, I’m suprised to see it’ll be a residential development. 80th and 15th will be a hard sell for living units. It’s just too far away from Ballard’s downtown core.
You’ve never driven up past 85th, have you?
There’s never enough parking!
The building should have at least one parking spot per unit, given that it is likely many units will be occupied by more than one person and have more than one car. And only a few, if any, will be occupied by people who don’t own any cars.
why would everyone need a car? the building is right along a prime bus corridor.
it’s the ‘everyone needs a car’ attitude that needs to go.
I know I take the bus to the dentist.
What an outrage! That building doesn’t fit with the area. It needs to look more like the Plasma Center, Muffler shop, strip club(s) and the other fine structures on 15th.
How sad…the building really needs a Tudor pitched roof, a brick facade, maybe some balconies with French/New Orleans-style wroght iron railings, a courtyard garden…this section of Ballard/Crown Hill is already in the hand basket. ‘Tis a pity…
I will miss that dirty old couch that has adorned the idyllic piece of land.
One parking space per unit is not everyone with a car. I figure units will have 0-3 cars each. You are right — the building is on a prime bus corridor and in easy walking distance to grocers and other services. Some people will not have a car. Nonetheless, many will have a car and many units will have more than one. I think one space per unit strikes a good compromise.
There are many situations people might choose to live in a building like this, rely mostly on public transportation, and STILL want to own a car. The less the car is used, the better that it be stored in the building’s garage instead of on nearby side streets. Picture a couple that bus to work, walk to the grocery store … but in summer they want to be able to drive to the mountains for hiking on the weekend. That doesn’t work well by bus. Or a couple with one partner who rides the bus daily, but the other works in sales and totes around a trunkful of heavy samples every day — this job can’t be done on public transportation.
I guess we shouldn’t expect the Taj Mahal at such a dumpy location where Zestos is your local fine dining option.
I live right by there. I don’t mind otherwise but the building is indeed pretty plain and office building looking. A little character of some sort would be nice. I agree, hard sell, they have to be priced much better than in Ballard’s core…. thus cheaper looking building I guess
plenty of schools though…
wrong area. thai siam is more like it.
Man am I glad I looked here for: A) common sense. B) good follow up questions. C) people that actually have a vested interest. D) serious ideas. E) snarky answers to todays issues. And on and on. Maybe, just maybe, the new businesses occupying that bldg. will actually employ people, and pay taxes, and allow somebody to live their lives? But for now I’ll tune here for all my solutions!
I have a vested interest – I live very near there – and gee, we actually go the restaurants nearby – I’d much rather live up here in Crown Hill than down in actual Ballard. My actual concern would be related to access – that’s a tricky intersection at the best of times and downright lethal during “rush hour” – getting in and out of that location will be challenging. And some character would be nice – a girl can dream
Zipcar!
The scenario you laid out is exactly what zipcar is for. You sign up, pay a fee that is way less than the costs of owning a car and you get to use one when you need it and don’t have to worry about where to park it when you’re not using it.
I think I got the “E) snarky answers…” part covered for you. Did you really expect to find A-D in the comments section? You must be new to teh internets.
Parking spaces aren’t free, they add to the cost of construction and maintenance of the building. I would bet that the number of parking spots designed into the building is a compromise of cost and expected demand made by the people who have a financial stake in the building.
It might be nice to keep an unused car in the garage, but would you do it if it cost you $200 a month?
Sven, you say the building doesn’t fit in, then give several examples of how it does! one of the comments at the Design Review mtg. was that it didn’t reflect the neighborhood context, but much of that context is not terribly attractive (the former antique shop a couple doors down a notable exception).
They’re trying to create reasonably priced housing, so I can appreciate the effort to build economically, maximize units and avoid expensive underground parking, but hope they can add some more visual interest and modulation, especially to the side facing the single family area where I own a home.
Where will you sleep now?
Wow it does look like an office complex – straight out of Bellevue. You would have to be pretty desperate to live in a building that looks like the office you just left. As to parking – the tenants will just do what all the tenants do all over the city – park on the neighborhood streets. The City Planning department lives in a dreamworld that people live near where they work -especially in these hard economic times this is so not true.
Stupid response SPG. My point is, that spot on 15th is a very strange place to live by anyone’s definition.
Everyone does need a car because our public transport system is not widespread and ubiquitious enough to replace the ease and convenience of using a car.
Reality is that people have cars, and if this does not have enough parking, people will park wherever they can, including the surrounding neighborhoods. This one project should not be considered in isolation. This is about the fifth such large scale project in the last two years that ignores the lack of parking issue and unresponsibly puts the burden elsewhere. If each of these were at least self-sustaining, I’d have no problem. Live and let live. But this looks like just the latest case of a developer trying to eek out the highest profit margin with no regard to the community. The minimum approval criterion should be “do no harm.”
I agree – adding parking spaces will most certainly add to the cost of the building, UNLESS a cost savings is achieved through reducing the number of residential units. How’s that for an idea? We need to hold these people accountable to come up with a sustainable plan, and not use wishful thinking, like “These residents will take the bus.” Prove it with factual data, and I’ll believe it. Otherwise, I’ll go with the average 2-3 cars per American household I know and can see with my own two eyes.
All of 15th is a strange place to live by my definition since I don’t like living on busy streets. Yet, there are a whole bunch of residential buildings on busy streets. There’s zoning that allows for these multi unit apartment buildings on busy streets including 15th, so no…not really that strange for some. And your response is stupider…so nyah!
All of 15th is a strange place to live by my definition since I don’t like living on busy streets. Yet, there are a whole bunch of residential buildings on busy streets. There’s zoning that allows for these multi unit apartment buildings on busy streets including 15th, so no…not really that strange for some. And your response is stupider…so nyah!
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I gotta ask if the neighborhood homes that are there now were built to be self sustaining when it came to parking. Most of my neighbors have garages but you never see their cars in them…
I gotta ask if the neighborhood homes that are there now were built to be self sustaining when it came to parking. Most of my neighbors have garages but you never see their cars in them…
You know what “does harm?”
Minimum on-site parking requirements that encourage automobile usage (“It’s so easy, I don’t even have to go outside!”) and therefore dump lots of new cars onto the same-capacity roads, through the same-capacity intersections, over the same-capacity bridge.
It makes those roads slower for everyone. It makes it harder for the buses to pull into traffic.
It also ensures that the new buildings add nothing to the neighborhoods: no new faces emerging from the front door, just a stream of automobiles crisscrossing the sidewalk into and out of the garage. The buildings hide from the street rather than facing it (just like the parking-required townhome clusters). Garage mandates are fundamentally anti-urban!
A funny thing happens when parking in the neighborhood starts to be a chore — people wonder whether they really NEED to drive those 5 blocks to the grocery store (“I’ll lose my spot.”) They might even start walking when they go out to dinner. And they might be more inclined to use transit when it’s feasible.
You don’t need to tell me that public transit sucks in Seattle. I don’t blame those who avoid it like the plague it can be, and I’m not trying to force it upon people by “punishing” driving. But drivers WHO THINK YOU CAN DENSIFY IN AN AUTO-CENTRIC WAY are patently wrong, and continued emphasis on high-density + high-parking development is the way to prove it.
(see: The corridor of Los Angeles from Santa Monica to downtown L.A., which has about 10 times Ballard’s density, a whole lot of cars, and a permanent traffic clustercluck. It’s also where L.A. is, finally, getting serious about highly frequent, highly reliable transit.)