West Seattle, Washington
25 Thursday
The proposal for 33 homes on a site in the 4700 block of 15th SW (west of here) has been in the works since at least 2006, according to city records, but – as reported here August 10th – a new “determination of non-significance” was recently issued. Now, that decision has been appealed. Today’s Land Use Information Bulletin says the hearing is scheduled for 9 am October 27 (at the Hearing Examiner‘s offices, 40th floor of the Municipal Tower downtown).
Discovered this during our periodic peek into the online records for the various lawsuits pending related to what was the Fauntleroy Place site (map), 
nicknamed “Hole Foods” since currently it’s a huge excavation awaiting a development that’s still supposed to include a Whole Foods store (as well as Hancock Fabrics and residential units): The newest development is that a legal action seeking “judicial foreclosure” was filed in King County Superior Court last week, by a firm identifying itself as 3922 SW Alaska LLC (the official address of record for the site), as a third party intervening in the lawsuits and liens pending regarding the site. The documents say that new entity holds the note/deed to the site as of late June (with the note’s most recent valuation listed as $21 million).
You can read the “complaint for judicial foreclosure” here; here’s an associated document, an order putting off a motion for summary judgment by a party to one of the lawsuits, because of the “intervention.”
As soon as we found this, we sought comment from Foster Pepper, the legal firm representing the party seeking foreclosure. They have not called back.
So to make sure we’re interpreting the action as accurately as possible, we informally consulted a real-estate-transaction expert (not involved in the case) who tells us it’s not unusual for a new entity to be formed in a situation like this to take over the financial and other liability. He adds, though, it’s not so commonplace for judicial foreclosure to be sought instead of nonjudicial – this type, he says, tends to take longer.
Bottom line, though, it’s another step in the path to getting the site’s future resolved, but it’s the first time the word “foreclosure” has been formally raised in this situation, and it could lead to the property being sold at auction. As we reported two weeks ago, Whole Foods’ official stance is that they are still expecting to open a store there, but they are “watching (the project) closely” to see if the commitments in their lease will be met. (When ground was ceremonially broken in June of last year – WSB coverage here – a February 2010 completion date was projected.) Lots more to follow up on this, of course, as we have done and will continue to do.
That unfinished building at 35th/Avalon is owned by developer Michael Mastro, as are several other West Seattle properties, including the LLC holding a stretch of land near the south end of Harbor Ave (once proposed for a development called Aqua Bella) and the parent company of the West Water apartment/condo-conversion complex in Morgan Junction. Tonight seattletimes.com reports that Mastro has agreed to go into Chapter 7 bankruptcy (explained here), after three banks took action attempting to force him to take on that status. What this means to his properties here (and elsewhere) isn’t clear; we had contacted the company a few weeks back to ask for comment on the status of the 35th/Avalon property, but received no reply. The most recent activity on the property involved the boarding up and fencing of its previously open street level (as shown in our photo, taken earlier this week).
We’ve been working on an overall update regarding what’s up – or not up – with the excavated-then-stalled site many West Seattleites have nicknamed “Hole Foods.” We’d hoped to wait to nail down a few more aspects of the story before publishing what Whole Foods itself is saying about it these days, but since a couple people (thanks!) have already e-mailed us about a short item at seattletimes.com today, we’d better just go ahead and share what WF’s regional spokesperson Vicki Foley told us yesterday afternoon, regarding whether they are still committed to that stalled site or possibly looking elsewhere:
We are watching the Fauntleroy Place project closely as the developer appears to have a number of obstacles to overcome, if he is to deliver the space to us by the deadlines in the lease.
Our original inquiry to WF earlier this week had been regarding whether there is a certain point at which they are no longer committed to the site (whose permit history is listed here); according to Foley, their commitment currently extends into next year. Meantime, WF announced earlier this week that its Interbay store is set to open October 14, and in other West Seattle grocery news, two sources (including this WSB Forums post) say the new QFC at Capco Plaza will open September 16th (10:31 am update: QFC spokesperson Kristin Maas confirms to WSB, “that’s the date we’re shooting for”). Our last Whole Foods WS site report was a month ago, when we broke the news that a West Seattle investor who’d hoped to buy the site was no longer pursuing a purchase. The financial firm that now owns the site has not yet responded to our requests for an update; there are currently four legal actions pending related to this project.
That’s the latest bar chart for responses to the neighborhood-plan survey we’ve been talking about – literally a once-in-a-decade chance to have an official say on where growth and planning goes from here. Whether or not you made it to the July 28th meeting to discuss the plans face to face, the city is hoping to get as many people as possible to fill out an online survey asking the same four questions. Yes, we know, it may not seem fair that Ballard/Crown Hill is ahead because it’s all lumped together as one neighborhood, while West Seattle has FIVE (Junction, Admiral, Delridge, Highland Park/Westwood Village, Morgan Junction), but nothing we can do about that now; it’s how things shook out a decade ago. But we’re not even being challenged by Ballard – our fellow online-only neighborhood-news providers at Rainier Valley Post are issuing a challenge to other neighborhoods. Not sure if this will turn into one of those Super Bowl bet deals where we each offer some famous local foodstuff (what IS an iconic West Seattle food, anyway? Husky ice cream, maybe?) – but we’ve up for a challenge. Before 5 pm tomorrow, go here to take the survey. If you don’t live in any of those five neighborhoods, fill it out for one that you frequently visit. The more voices are heard in this process, the better the end result; tell your friends, tell your neighbors, use SHARE THIS below to send this around.
Two West Seattle items from recent Land Use Information Bulletin and Daily Permit Issuance lists:
“DETERMINATION OF NON-SIGNIFICANCE” FOR 33 HOMES NORTHEAST OF PUGET PARK: The street address is listed as 4741 15th SW, which isn’t on Google Maps‘ radar, so the closest we can link you is the same block of 16th, immediately west. The notice of this decision says the project comment period was originally open in 2006, but there’s an appeal window now that the DNS decision is in, deadline August 24th. You can see the notice, and how to appeal, here; the project page is here but doesn’t list any other permit applications so far. Now to the other side of West Seattle:
APPLICATION TO REMOVE 13 EVERGREENS (AND OTHER VEGETATION): The city has opened a public-comment period for that proposal in the neighborhood pictured above, at 8746 Fauntlee Crest Way in Fauntleroy (map). The online notice doesn’t specify the exact location of the 13 trees/2,800+ square feet of vegetation “to be removed in an environmentally critical area,” but does mention a steep slope and a “re-vegetation management plan.” We have a request for comment out to the landscape architect listed as the contact. The notice says comments will be taken through August 19th. The project page is here; no other permit applications are listed.
(Tip: Want to know what development activity is pending in your neighborhood? This DPD map is one way to keep tabs.)
Two more notes from the city permit files this morning: The land-use permit has just been issued for the project shown above, 4502 42nd SW (corner of SW Oregon; map), which is planned as a 7-story building with 89 residential units over 20,000+ square feet of ground-level retail and office space, with parking for 121 vehicles. Four houses on the site will be demolished when construction begins; next steps include building and demolition permits. Meantime, the city has just published approvals for “shoreline substantial development” and administrative Design Review for the 2-years-in-the-works 2-story proposal (two residential units over retail) at the old Pegasus Pizza site (2758 Alki); the official decision notice explains how to appeal.
Thanks to John at Mary North Travel for the tip that demolition work is under way at one of their neighboring businesses in The Triangle, Lien Animal Clinic (3710 SW Alaska; map). Their old building is coming down, just one week after they opened their new 2-story building on the north side of the site. And as is sometimes the case with demolition sites, firefighters are doing some training on the section of the old building that isn’t down yet:
Once demolition is done, the area where the old building stood will become parking for the bigger new one. By the way, if you wonder what’s up with the nearby site where Harbor Properties plans to build Link – there’s been some partial site clearing as West Seattle Montessori School (WSB sponsor) moves to its new location, but Harbor tells us its work on Link isn’t scheduled to start till later in the year.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
As a member of the citywide Neighborhood Plan Advisory Council, Sharonn Meeks facilitated several groups during the series of plan-status meetings that ended in Delridge last night.
The turnout along the way had been spotty. For First Hill’s discussion, for example, Meeks says she facilitated a table of one.
Last night, however, a different story. By the time late arrivals had found their seats in the air-conditioned Youngstown Arts Center auditorium — a last-minute substitution for the non-air-conditioned Delridge Community Center across the street — more than 100 people had arrived. Asked after the event how that compared to the others she’d facilitated, Meeks enthused, “This is huge!”
The city’s proposal to enable the building of dozens more “backyard cottages” – allowed now only in Southeast Seattle but potentially to be allowed around the rest of Seattle – sparked a lot of discussion during presentations at recent community-group meetings in West Seattle, so we’re sharing this announcement just forwarded by the Department of Neighborhoods‘ Delridge District Coordinator Ron Angeles: A public hearing on the plan is now set for 5:30 pm on September 15 in the council chambers at City Hall downtown. In the meantime, the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will get a briefing at 9:30 am August 12 – that committee meeting, like most, will have a “general public comment period” beforehand if there’s anything you’d like to say. You can also send your thoughts to council members via their website, and if you’re just catching up on the backyard-cottage proposal, you can read up here.
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Between that burned-out plumbing shop photographed at 37th and Alaska in the ’30s …
… and the 44th/Alaska fire station (photographed in the ’20s) whose crews likely responded to the plumbing shop fire … we have a unique business district that’s going through growing pains, as new developments like this one arrive …
… others are on the drawing board …
… and we all wonder what will eventually happen here:
What will our peninsula look like in five years, 10 years, 20 years? What SHOULD it look like? Is the vision written down a decade ago still relevant now? This is a rare chance to say what you think, on the official record. Tomorrow night, five West Seattle areas with Neighborhood Plans, including The Junction, get their first chance in a decade to revisit them and discuss whether they still work. Among the other areas – Morgan Junction, where “Mr. Jerome’s house” was photographed in the 4000 block of Orchard way back when …
A couple blocks west of that scene, you’ll find new townhouses and not-so-new apartments. A few blocks north of there, businesses new and old. It’s the same story all over West Seattle. Take a couple hours out of your night Tuesday, come out of the sun and into Delridge Community Center, and join the Neighborhood Plan Status Checks for Admiral, Delridge, Highland Park/Westwood, Morgan Junction, and The Junction. Each neighborhood will have its own “breakout” spot to discuss specifics, with two facilitators: For Admiral, it’s Mark Wainwright and Catherine Benotto; for The Junction, Sharonn Meeks and Kay Knapton; for Morgan Junction, Cindi Barker and Jerry Finrow; for Delridge, Boaz Ashkenazy and Chris Persons; for Highland Park/Westwood, Christie Coxley and Kevin McDonald – the facilitators represent the City Neighborhood Council and the Seattle Planning Commission. As noted yesterday, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Spanish translation will be available.
We have spoken with two of the facilitators; Sharonn Meeks (who’s president of the Fairmount Community Association) says she is hopeful for a good community turnout – during the original neighborhood planning process 10 years ago, she says, not enough community members participated. Cindi Barker (who’s with the Morgan Community Association) tells WSB, “I’m looking forward to seeing both old and new faces at this workshop. We’ve made inroads on the Morgan Junction projects, but the remaining projects might not be as applicable these days. It will be very interesting to hear what people are thinking about changes in the neighborhood.”
You can just come and listen – even that signifies taking a stand, showing interest in the future. Review the four questions first:
1. Most of the neighborhood plans were adopted about 10 years ago and are in their mid-life. How has your neighborhood changed in the last decade since the plan was adopted, (or since you’ve been there)?
2. What changes or aspects of your neighborhood are you most pleased about? Most dissatisfied about?
3. How well are your Neighborhood Plan vision and key strategies being achieved? Are they still the priority?
4. The city is completing neighborhood plan status reports focusing on demographics, development patterns, housing affordability, public amenities and transportation networks. What should there be more focus on (or less focus on) as the neighborhood status reports are completed in the coming months? Are there any important gaps in the draft status report?
And check out the status overviews and other documents regarding all the neighborhoods here. Then just show up, 6 pm Tuesday, Delridge Community Center. It’ll open with an explanation/orientation before everybody breaks off.
Thanks to Keith for sharing that photo of his home at 3045 49th SW (map) near Schmitz Park. He explains:
Sure, there’s construction going on around West Seattle, some of it pretty interesting, but still, nothing like this that I’ve ever seen. … I can’t tell you what a surreal sight it is to see our little house sitting on “cribs” some 13 feet up (23 feet up from the road). It’s a real traffic stopper, I can tell you. People ask what we’re doing. Can you tell? Feel free to run the photo, and to invite people to come by and guess. Just don’t recommend that anyone stand underneath and sneeze . . .
We could cheat by checking city online records, but we won’t spoil it for you. Meantime, 16 months after Seattle Fire Department crews did some training at pre-teardown 5232 California (map), the house itself is finally debris.
Rick from nearby Rick’s Barber Shop told us last week that the backhoe had arrived – we didn’t get over in time today to catch it in action (early-morning work to be done before things really heated up?) but caught the pile of debris before it was cleared. The city page for the site says permits were just renewed for plans to build two buildings at the site – 4 townhouse units, 3 “live-work” units.
Oh sorry, we meant time travel AHEAD, not back – but the Municipal Archives are full of so many cool old photos, we had to put one up (1930, Youngstown area of North Delridge). Now, as for those two chances to shape THE FUTURE: Tuesday night is the REALLY big one – 6 pm, Delridge Community Center,, your long-awaited opportunity to join in “status checks” for the Neighborhood Plans (see them on the right sidebar here) created a decade ago — the plans that are referred to hundreds of times a year – they’re why The Junction, for example, has areas set for high-rise growth and some other neighborhoods don’t. Do the plans created a decade ago still make sense? How do you want to see your neighborhood grow? For your advance review before joining in Tuesday’s discussions, you can see the draft status “overviews” for the 5 West Seattle areas with NPs, published in preparation for the meeting, here:
Admiral
Delridge
Highland Park/Westwood Village
The Junction
Morgan Junction
Georgetown (here’s its “overview”) also will be discussed at the Delridge CC gathering; each of these neighborhoods will have its own “table” with facilitators; Spanish, Vietnamese and Tagalog translation will be available as well. There are even more documents you can review, grouped by neighborhood, linked from the city page about the meeting, the last of five citywide; this page shows you how to comment online if you absolutely can’t be there in person – but facilitators, which include local community leaders, stress it’ll be two hours well-spent – here’s what one of them, Sharonn Meeks, tells WSB:
West Seattle in particular is experiencing growing pains. There are transportation, parking and land use issues that your readers consistently respond to from your news reporting. I want to encourage all apartment residents, homeowners and businesses to bring those same comments to this Open House so they can be included in the discussions and decisions that lay ahead as we formalize our next 10 years of community.
We really aren’t exaggerating to say it’s something like “speak now or for another decade hold your peace.”
Meantime, a big discussion of where King County goes from here also is happening in West Seattle next week — your chance to suggest your “vision for the future and (to) help develop a countywide strategic plan that better aligns county functions and services.” The meeting (which will include “small group discussions”) is Thursday night, 6:30 pm, The Hall at Fauntleroy, one of four this month around the county. Read more about it here.
More than three years after its first Design Review meeting, Golden Crest – the mixed-use (36 residential units over 4,000 square feet of retail) project at 4532 42nd SW, next to Capco Plaza – won final Southwest Design Review Board approval tonight. ADDED 2:11 AM: Some details from the review meeting – read on:Read More
Nine months after its “early design guidance” Southwest Design Review Board meeting (WSB coverage here), the proposed development at 4106 Delridge has moved to a new stage, applying for a land-use permit, as noted in today’s edition of the city’s twice-weekly Land Use Information Bulletin. It’s currently described as 5 stories, 4,000 square feet of retail, 36 residential units, parking “within the structure” for 39 vehicles.
Sharonn Meeks from the Fairmount Community Association went to last night’s Highland Park Action Committee meeting to hit the point home: West Seattle neighborhoods need to represent in a big way at next Tuesday night’s “Neighborhood Plan Status Report” meeting at Delridge Community Center (where she’ll be a facilitator). Five West Seattle neighborhoods have Neighborhood Plans crafted a decade ago — The Junction, Admiral, Morgan Junction, Delridge, Highland Park/Westwood (all linked in the right sidebar here). Some have called for revisiting them in a big way – that’s not on the drawing board yet, but next Tuesday’s meeting is designed to revisit them all in a small way, with official “status reports” and gathering of residents’ opinions.
There’s no shortage of those opinions, as evidenced in discussions here on WSB and in the few public meetings that relate to planning processes, such as Design Review Board meetings. But if ever you’ve wanted to say something about the future of West Seattle – and its state right now – this meeting is the place.
Meeks will facilitate one of the discussions at the session – each of the five neighborhoods will have its own discussion, and Georgetown will be part of this gathering too. Advance reading material, from the original plans to “status reports,” is now available on the city site – we’ll get to the direct links at the end of this story.
What Meeks told HPAC last night gets to the heart of why this meeting matters: She listened to what was discussed in the meeting before it was her turn, and she heard concerns about issues like traffic and safety. They all play into long-term planning, she stressed.
Delridge Neighborhoods District Council chair Pablo Lambinicio (seen in the background of our photo, facing the camera) then spoke. He said he’d been part of the process 10 years ago as a Westwood resident. At the time, he noted, the “urban village” was the central idea and all neighborhood planning was to revolve around the “urban villages.” That idea didn’t really draw Highland Park residents into the process a decade ago, Lambinicio noted, but now it’s a chance to take a step toward building a plan from the ground up, rather than the top down.
Rory Denovan, former HPAC vice chair, said it’s vital for this to be handled at the neighborhood level, since the neighborhoods live with the consequences. He urged others to get involved and make sure Highland Park residents are at Tuesday’s meeting to be heard. HPAC’s current chair Dan Mullins said he plans to follow up by gathering members to try to arrange a meeting with City Councilmember Sally Clark, who chairs the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee. He also offered to accept questions/concerns from anyone who cannot make next Tuesday’s meeting.
The city is taking online comments too – but it can’t be stressed enough, there’s no substitute for being there, if there’s any way you can spare 2 hours next Tuesday night. Even if you don’t live in one of the five neighborhood-plan zones, you have a stake in one or more of them – particularly The Junction, with another major new building about to open and more in the wings once the economic bumpiness is past.
Each group at Tuesday’s meeting – again, those groups are Admiral, The Junction, Westwood Village/Highland Park, Delridge and Morgan Junction – will tackle four questions:
1. Most of the neighborhood plans were adopted about 10 years ago and are in their mid-life. How has your neighborhood changed in the last decade since the plan was adopted, (or since you’ve been there)?
2. What changes or aspects of your neighborhood are you most pleased about? Most dissatisfied about?
3. How well are your Neighborhood Plan vision and key strategies being achieved? Are they still the priority?
4. The city is completing neighborhood plan status reports focusing on demographics, development patterns, housing affordability, public amenities and transportation networks. What should there be more focus on (or less focus on) as the neighborhood status reports are completed in the coming months? Are there any important gaps in the draft status report?
See the draft status report and other documents by following links from the “Status Reports” list at the bottom of this page – note that the West Seattle neighborhoods are woven in with others. The documents are at local libraries, too. Again, the meeting is 6-8 pm next Tuesday (7/28), Delridge Community Center (map). But if you absolutely cannot make it Tuesday (again, going in person sends a major message that you care about your neighborhood’s future) — participate online by going here. Then watch for word of followup meetings this fall.
That’s the cover rendering for the revised design proposal for Golden Crest, the mixed-use (35 residential units, plus retail) building at 4532 42nd SW that’s been going through Design Review off and on since spring 2006. It’s the building at left – immediately south of Capco Plaza, which you see at right. The next Design Review meeting for Golden Crest could be its last if board members approve the latest version of the plan – the meeting’s at 6:30 pm tomorrow, Senior Center of West Seattle. You can see the full design proposal packet online here; the cover shot doesn’t appear much different from what was shown at the last meeting in April, but if you look very closely at the ground level, and read pages 3 and 4, you’ll see how the developer and architects believe they have addressed what was brought up at that meeting, including features to “emphasize the retail spaces.” (If the address still doesn’t jog your memory, this is the same site where the big old blue house – which had been a hospital long ago – was torn down in November.)
After breaking the news about a prospective Whole Foods site buyer not pursuing the purchase, and then a restaurant closure, while looking into a couple of other reportedly stalled developments, it seemed like time to break things up by checking with a developer whose project IS proceeding and in fact is almost done: Leon Capelouto, longtime Junction entrepreneur who is building Capco Plaza/Altamira Apartments along SW Alaska between 41st and 42nd. We talked with him in his nearby office this afternoon.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
A stone’s throw from the stalled project site dubbed “Hole Foods,” there’s a Junction development with a very different story to tell: Capco Plaza, the new home of QFC and Office Depot in The Junction, sharing its building with Altamira Luxury Apartments, is within a few months of opening for business.
In his office over nearby Matador, Leon Capelouto says he’s “very busy” with “hundreds of items” that need to be addressed before the building is done. He admits he’s very “hands on” – that’s part of his answer when we asked how he managed to keep this project on track when so many others of that scale have run into trouble. (Of course, financing is important too, he allows.)
The space where QFC will open a new store on the east side of his building has already been “turned over to the tenant,” Capelouto says – meaning the Kroger-owned store chain is now putting in its finishing touches. When we talked with a QFC spokesperson for our last update one month ago today, the company expected to open the store in “early fall,” ahead of schedule. Capelouto expects that is still the likelihood (we have a call out to QFC to doublecheck) – he showed us an e-mail exchange involving their scheduling of two Seattle Seahawks organization favorites, the Sea Gals and Blue Thunder drum line, for an event on October 10th that might be an official opening celebration after an earlier soft opening.
So what else is confirmed for the rest of the building?Read More
(June photo looking into the Whole Foods site excavation from its southeast side)
E-mail this week jolted us into realizing a whole month had passed since our last official update on what has become known as the “Hole Foods” site, the excavated hole where Whole Foods, Hancock Fabrics and more than 100 residential units were supposed to be built, till construction idled last fall and lawsuits erupted (as first reported here). If you have been following along, you may also remember that news broke in January of a new deal pending for the site, and two months later, an entity calling itself Alamo Manhattan surfaced, led by West Seattleite Matt Segrest, confirming Alamo Manhattan was “under contract to purchase the site” (4/7 WSB report here). We subsequently checked in with Segrest periodically for progress reports; last month, he told us he was “still working on a deal.” So with four weeks having passed, we pinged him on Wednesday to ask if he’s still pursuing the project. The answer that came in today: No. Segrest’s exact quote, via e-mail:
At this time, Alamo Manhattan has chosen to not move forward with the purchase. (We maintain interest in the opportunity, though.)
That’s all the details we have. Since we found this out late on a Friday, we won’t be able to check with others – such as the site’s current owner – till Monday. Meantime, the lawsuits involving the site are still listed in court records as pending, and a check of online records regarding the parcel shows 12 liens in all filed since late last year. (We couldn’t check further into court documents tonight – the service that makes them available online shut down for the night earlier than usual.)
The Southwest District Council usually meets the first Wednesday of the month but moved and shortened its meeting this month to combine with an SDOT presentation about neighborhood traffic calming – and that brought out more than a dozen extra attendees. At left, SDOT’s Christina Legazpi with a radar gun, which her colleague Jane Rebelowski explained is often the first tool to determine if your neighborhood really needs help. If you sign up and get at least four more people on your street to join you, you’ll be able to take a class on how to use a radar gun, which will be loaned to you. She suggests neighbors work in pairs to track how fast cars are going and what type of cars are seen speeding. They notch two hours of logged observations to gauge the speed problem. Then comes the next phase – SPD enforcement and/or installation of calming measures. They can include signs, humps, chicanes, chokers (chicanes right across from each other) … all explained here, all potentially funded by money you can apply for. So how effective are the various measures? she was asked – and: Why not put up more stop signs? She says the federal government outlaws simply using stop signs for traffic calming – and they’re easily ignored anyway. Some attendees said they’d applied for traffic calming and gotten turned down; Rebelowski said she’d take a look at the specifics of their applications. If you’re interested in finding out more about how to confirm whether your neighborhood has a problem, and then figure out what to do about it, e-mail her: jane.rebelowski@seattle.gov – and note that this year’s deadline to apply for projects like traffic circles is fast approaching, end of the month.
The group also heard from Andrea Petzel with the same presentation on “backyard cottages” that she gave to the Delridge District Council last month – the city is considering allowing them in more areas. One attendee asked if there would be a vote or whether the City Council would “just ram it down our throats.” Junction Neighborhood Organization president Erica Karlovits expressed concern about density; Petzel said the cottages would only be allowed on single-family lots, but Karlovits pointed out that in The Junction, single-family residences are in close proximity to the ongoing new high-density building. Petzel countered by saying the city planned a maximum of 50 permits per year and she didn’t think that would ultimately affect density. (According to the “backyard cottage” program website, they’ve been allowed in Southeast Seattle for three years, but only 18 permits have been sought.)
Is West Seattle ready for “flexible workspaces”? That’s what James Tjoa is trying to figure out, and he would love to know what you think. He is working on the residential side of the project that Admiral Safeway has proposed for redeveloping its site, and exploring an idea that came up in response to concerns voiced at previous Design Review Board meetings: 
Adding to the “density” of the residential section along 42nd (top-center of that rendering from last fall, which we use just as a reference) by turning part of that section of the building into workspace. The space in question involves about 18,000 square feet around what will be Safeway’s loading dock – Tjoa says they realized that having living units atop and alongside the loading dock wouldn’t be optimal anyway, with noise and other concerns. They took a look around West Seattle, and while there’s ActivSpace on Harbor Ave, there’s no flexible workspace of note in the business-district centers. The “flexible space” concept is very much in the roughing-out process, he explains — some of it might be small spaces for just one person (150 square feet?), some bigger (up to 700?). And he says they’re open to hearing thoughts on the concept of “shared space” too – one of those places where you pay a fee to have the right to use a desk on a drop-in basis. In addition to the density concern, Tjoa says this concept could solve another of the criticisms brought up during previous Design Review meetings – there was a “green wall” there by the loading dock, and now he says the workspace could come all the way down to the sidewalk and “activate” the area facing 42nd as a result. According to Tjoa, some additional parking would be added beyond what was previously envisioned – some underground parking on that side of the building, in addition to what’s proposed for the Safeway roof. As they continue roughing out this concept, they’re also wondering what people might want – a conference room? bike storage? or? If you’ve got some thoughts about what this kind of space would need, he would love to hear from you at james@jamestjoa.com or 206-726-6230 … or leave a comment on this story. As for the entire project’s official status – it’s been through two Design Review meetings (most recently in November), and the next one is not yet scheduled.
ORIGINAL 12:04 PM REPORT: If you saw this report in today’s Seattle Times regarding an Eastside foreclosure on property owned by Conner Homes, the developer for the California/Alaska/42nd parcels in The Junction, you may have wondered about the status of Conner’s West Seattle plans. We have phone and e-mail messages out to company owner Charlie Conner requesting comment. We also are checking online land/court records and so far have not found anything unusual. The most recent official activity regarding the 2-building proposal was its final Southwest Design Review Board meeting April 23 (WSB coverage here). Note that the official owner of the Junction property is 4700 California LLC (for which Charlie Conner is the contact listed in state records), which bought it in 2000; county property records say $1.4 million was the price for the western parcel, $2.1 million for the eastern parcel.
1:30 PM UPDATE: Charlie Conner just called us back. Regarding West Seattle (where the photo shows him at a 2008 meeting for this project), he says, “Different project, different company. West Seattle very much still makes economic sense.” Why? 
“Anything that’s worth more than what you paid for it!” (Note the links above regarding these parcels having been purchased in 2000.) “The other (Eastside) projects don’t make economic sense,” though he is hopeful of getting one of them back. Conner added, “What I can tell you is, everybody that works for me is paid in full. Only people that I owe money to are the banks and a contractor i’m paying on a monthly basis … we delivered all the homes to the customers that had presales …I take my commitments pretty seriously.” So what’s the status of the Junction project? “The drawings will be resubmitted to the city.” And he says he’s hoping to meet “in the next couple of weeks” with “a few folks in The Junction” whom he says are still not happy “with the process … (I want) to talk to them about that and see what else we might do to make sure everybody likes what we’re doing, and then we’ll be moving forward with (Master Use Permit) approval and the alley vacation … so we’ll be ready to start next year.” We asked about financing? He says they “haven’t even looked” for it yet because of the market conditions. We also asked him about rumors that the site is or will be for sale. “Everything’s always for sale,” he said wryly. “Are there buyers out there who’d want to pay me what it’s worth? Probably not.” However, he reiterated, it is not currently listed for sale and they currently are “NOT marketing the property.” The city’s official project page for the current proposal is here.
…As in, less (fewer) restrictions could mean more variety in housing units. Or, so said the architects from whom City Councilmember Sally Clark 
and her Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee heard at Youngstown Arts Center Tuesday night. A fair share of the two-dozen-plus audience members came from a class at the UW, according to a shoutout from Clark as the meeting wrapped up, but those on hand also included two West Seattle architects who have spoken out on the subject before: Brandon Nicholson, who recently completed a city consultancy contract to work on part of the Multi-Family Code Update – that’s the zoning section that includes townhouses – and David Foster, a former chair of the Southwest Design Review Board (of which Nicholson is a current member, though he’s been on hiatus while on the city contract). No votes were taken, no decisions were made, but it’s another stretch of the road toward a change. Read on for details:Read More
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