West Seattle, Washington
07 Tuesday
…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
Will Seattle’s future townhouses transcend the dominant design critiqued in that city photo/graphic? City Councilmember Sally Clark hopes so. Tonight — almost one full year after she, Mayor Nickels and West Seattle architect Brandon Nicholson stood together at the Capitol Hill announcement (July 2008 WSB coverage here) of the proposal to change the Multi-Family Code, particularly as it affects townhouse design, the committee Clark chairs brings the topic to West Seattle. At 6 pm at Youngstown Arts Center, her Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee convenes a “review and discussion of issues surrounding townhouses and other low-rise housing.” Those issues are detailed in this 12-page memo, if you have time for a little advance studying – after which, if you have something to say, tonight’s agenda has room for it, with a full hour set aside for public comment. (And if you want to check on the status of the entire Multi-Family Code proposal, that’s all here.)
That’s one of four benches that are being installed this afternoon in front of the new loft-townhouse development at 1716 California SW (map). The benches, and the open-space easement they represent, will be at the heart of a celebration tomorrow morning, because of the neighborhood success story they represent, something we’ve told you a bit about before: In March of last year, we wrote about nearby residents’ concerns about whether the development would honor open-space easement requirements linked to a onetime Seattle City Light substation site on the property. Over the ensuing months, a plan was worked out, and we got final word recently from author/historian Clay Eals, who lives nearby; we didn’t shoot a closeup of the inscription on the benches, but he shared the text:
OPEN SPACE FOR ALL
Enjoy these benches for a brief respite. Thanks to the City of Seattle and to the owner of the project that replaced the City Light substation on this site, this 100-foot frontage strip is an easement for public use from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through May 2026.
This open space is privately owned and maintained. Please pick up any stray items when you leave. Palm Avenue neighbors thank you!
As our 3/08 report noted, City Councilmembers got involved too, and one of them – Councilmember Jean Godden (described by Eals as “our champion to insure that a public easement was included in the sale documents”) – is expected to speak at tomorrow morning’s official unveiling of the benches. You’re welcome too – 10 am, out front at 1716 California SW, across from Park West.
LAND USE PERMIT FOR “LINK”: In the Triangle, the mixed-use building Harbor Properties plans to build at 38th/Alaska (on the site that’s been home to West Seattle Montessori School [WSB sponsor] and a former Huling auto shop) has received its land-use permit; we’ll be checking with Harbor to find out its newest plans for a construction timeline (those permits are still in the pipeline). ***Added 1:42 pm: Harbor’s Emi Baldowin tells WSB that Link construction is expected to start in early fall; they’re still securing financing but “it looks good.”**** (back to original report) Westward into The Junction:
DESIGN REVIEW MEETING SET FOR 4532 42ND SW: Three years after its first design-review meeting, and 7 months after the big old house on the site was demolished, this mixed-use project in The Junction still has at least one more Southwest Design Review Board meeting to go, and the date for that is now tentatively set for July 23 (time TBA) at the nearby Senior Center of West Seattle.
THREE CLOSED SCHOOLS: From this morning’s city Land Use Information Bulletin – a long list of “notices of interpretation” regarding closed Seattle Public Schools buildings around the city, including three in West Seattle – Fairmount Park, E.C. Hughes and the newly re-closed Genesee Hill. The text of each notice goes like this:
The issue raised, subject to Land Use Code Interpretation, was whether the (school building in question) may be converted to certain other uses permitted in the Single Family 5000 zone, without convening a School Use Advisory Committee. The Department has concluded that the school building may be converted to any of the following institutional uses, regardless of conformity with institutional development standards, without going through the SUAC process: Child care centers, public or private schools, educational and vocational training for the disabled, adult evening education classes, nonprofit libraries, community centers, community programs for the elderly or similar uses. The building also may be converted to any other use permitted outright in the SF 5000 zone, as listed at Seattle Municipal Code Section 23.44.006, without going through the SUAC process.
Anyone who disagrees with that interpretation has till July 9th to file an appeal. The notice for Fairmount Park is here; the notice for E.C. Hughes is here; the notice for Genesee Hill is here. We have a question out to Seattle Public Schools to find out if there’s any particular reason these “interpretations” were pursued for these and five other properties citywide. 3:19 PM UPDATE: From school district spokesperson David Tucker: “Nothing has changed regarding the buildings’ status.” He says this is a move made to enable “expanded usage in the future,” possibly so that community organizations could rent the buildings for usages beyond church, school or day care: “It’s to the district’s benefit to have community organizations in these buildings — they help maintain the buildings” and step up security. He stresses that any change in the buildings’ status would have to be approved by the School Board, and he doesn’t expect anything to be proposed until the rest of the Student Assignment Plan is finalized.
Those are the “before” and “after” photos from an Eastside project that won a REX (Remodeling Excellence) Award – presented by the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties – for West Seattle’s Weitzel Construction (WSB sponsor) this past weekend. As Dave Weitzel explains …
… there were 64 entrants in 19 categories from best Universal Design to Major Rebuild over $500,000. Our entry was in the Major Remodel $300,000 to $600,000 and won in its category against 6 other entrants. Also, all the people attending the event have the opportunity to view all the entrants before the program begins and vote for their favorite entrant, called the People’s Choice Award, and we also won in that category.
Weitzel Construction has won REX Awards before – see the list on their website. Also winning a REX Award — this time for Kitchen Remodeling — another West Seattle builder and WSB sponsor, Ventana Construction – here’s their winning project:
Anne Higuera from Ventana explains:
Each year, the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties and its Remodelors Council honor the best in local remodeling with the REX awards. Projects are judged on aesthetics, special or unique design solutions, quality workmanship, use of appropriate building material, budgetary consideration, and challenges and obstacles. Ventana was honored in the REX category for kitchen remodeling in the $75,000-$125,000 range, a category with 6 entrants. The project was part of a larger remodel on a 1923 home in Fremont.
You can read more about Ventana’s winning project here. Meantime, the full list of awards isn’t on the builders’ group’s website yet, but we’ll add it here when it is.
After our update Thursday on the stalled Whole Foods project, we got a note asking what’s new with The Junction area’s other new grocery store – the one where construction is almost done, the QFC at Capco Plaza along Alaska between 41st and 42nd. Just talked with Kristin Maas at QFC HQ, and she tells us that while there’s no exact grand-opening date set yet, it’s looking like “early fall” – which she describes as “ahead of schedule,” because they’d previously expected to open in “late fall.” This will be the second QFC in a mixed-use (commercial and residential) development, she notes, after the Uptown store at 5th/Mercer, which opened two-plus years ago; she says, “We’ve been learning ever since” and that the special features of the West Seattle store will include hot “bistro”-style food for takeout (though there will be some limited seating) – and pizza ovens. The other major retail tenant announced for the building was Office Depot; we’ll check with them next week. Meantime, we just noticed the website for the residential section of the building, Altamira Luxury Apartments, has been upgraded – the building features it lists include a “chic Internet cafe.” When they open later this year, it’ll be the second new set of apartments to open in The Junction this year – after Mural Apartments (WSB sponsor), now renting barely two blocks away.
CLEAN AND GREEN: This morning at 9 am, 42nd/Genesee (map) is the epicenter of Seattle’s community-cleanup movement – as the newly funded Genesee P-Patch hosts a city-supported Clean and Green event. It’ll coincide with the Junction Neighborhood Organization Adopt-a-Street cleanup, including the Junction Plaza Park site (getting ever-closer to full construction funding). A mayoral appearance is scheduled to kick it all off.
PARK PARTY: After you’ve recovered from helping clean up The Junction, head north to California Place Park to celebrate all the work that’s gone into the process of designing potential park improvements. 3:30 pm, entertainment, treats and good company – and a chance to see what landscape designer Karen Kiest came up with in her final report to Friends and Neighbors of North Admiral.
ICE-CREAM DONATIONS: Go wish Full Tilt Ice Cream in White Center a happy 1st birthday today, and your purchase will be a triple gift – a treat for you, more support for this vibrant small business, and a matching ice cream donation to the White Center Food Bank.
Lots more fun in the West Seattle Weekend Lineup!
(photo taken Tuesday, looking east from the west side of the site)
We’ve received a couple notes in the past week or so inquiring about the status of what’s been dubbed the “Hole Foods” site at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th – where construction on a proposed Whole Foods Market/Hancock Fabrics/residential building has been stalled for more than half a year now – like this note from Dorothy:
I don’t see the Whole Foods sign at the dig at (Alaska) and Fauntleroy. Does this
mean they no longer plan to be there? What is the status of that construction site?
First of all – the banner that used to be on the fence there disappeared the day after our most recent report of vandalism (someone cut the W out of the word Whole). But aside from that, we were overdue for a project check anyway; read on to see what we have found out – both about this site, and another site linked to the Whole Foods project’s original developers:Read More
We published first word of this on June 8th. But it’s too important to not mention again, since the city’s sending notices around again today. The “Neighborhood Plan Status Check” meeting for West Seattle is July 28th. The plans (find them here), written a decade ago with community involvement, outline not what your neighborhood looks like now so much as what it will look like in the future. Read on for the meeting explanation/reminder issued today:Read More
While Satterlee House owner William Conner is pursuing his development-rights appeal on five main points, only one of those points was spotlighted in oral arguments this morning before the state’s second-highest court: “Whether the city’s landmarks ordinance is unconstitutionally vague,” as Conner’s lawyer Richard Hill described it. The arguments went quickly – as we noted in the morning preview from the Court of Appeals-Division 1 courtroom at One Union Square downtown, each side gets 10 minutes, and a digital clock tracks the time in glaring red illumination – starting just after 10 am, and concluding, with some questions from the judges along the way, just before 10:30. Read on for details (and backstory if you haven’t followed this case before):Read More
While much of the attention regarding the stalled Whole Foods development at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th has focused on what will happen to, and in, the huge hole – one WSBer has been worrying about the road alongside the hole. She contacted the city to express her concerns and wanted to share the e-mail she received, regarding how it’s being monitored — read on:Read More
The latest vandalism to the “Whole Foods Coming Soon” sign at the idled construction site at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th has morphed it into a display of the site’s nickname, “Hole Foods.” (Last incident, you’ll recall, involved a date change.) We also have a bit of news on the stalled project; its revised land-use permit was officially issued on Monday, as the end of a process triggered when the design changed last summer and the project returned for Design (re-)Review. We checked with city planner Michael Dorcy, who’s assigned to the project, and the permit issuance is not necessarily a sign of anything changing – it was the result of action put into motion long before the site was put up for sale, lawsuits erupted, etc. (Here’s the site’s official city permit-info page.) We also have checked back with Matt Segrest, the local investor who’s been working to put together a deal to buy the site (reported here in April), and his update was simply “nothing new.” UPDATE: As of Thursday, the sign is gone.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Sometimes when the public-comment period arrives midway through meetings of the Southwest Design Review Board – one of 7 such volunteer boards around the city charged with evaluating major development proposals – the concerns and complaints tend to meander away from the topic at hand, the project’s design.
Not last night, as The Kenney‘s redevelopment proposal returned to the SWDRB for a third “early design guidance” meeting (here’s our original as-it-happened update from last night; here’s coverage of the previous meeting in January).
Referring to the six-story “donut” building in the plans — a new formation since The Kenney announced it was shifting the design to scrap the panned plan to tear down the cupola-topped Seaview building — one neighbor declared, “I don’t want to live next to the Pentagon.”
“That’s a perfect design comment,” observed board chair Christie Coxley.
The building in question is envisioned in the newest design documents (see them all here) as actually more of a square, but before recommending that The Kenney move to the next phase of design review, board members had their own thoughts about it and other project aspects too, while architect Gene Guszkowski (from Wisconsin-based AG Architecture) revealed some news since the new design proposal was previewed at a community meeting last week:
We’re at the Senior Center of West Seattle, where more than 50 people are gathered as The Kenney‘s 
$150 million redevelopment project is back before the Southwest Design Review Board. Architect Gene Guszkowski has just announced that the cupola-topped Seaview building was formally nominated today for landmark status (not listed yet on this page, though), which triggers a separate city process that, as he noted, will proceed in parallel. Much of this presentation should duplicate what was shown at the community meeting we covered last week (here’s our report; here’s the official presentation packet), but we will add to this report with anything else new that’s disclosed tonight, as well as first word of the SWDRB’s decision – whether the project will advance to the next step in the process – once it’s in (not likely to be before 8 pm). 6:44 PM UPDATE: Guszkowski just announced the long-requested (and ultimately required) tree survey will be done at the site next Monday. 8:09 PM UPDATE: The board has unanimously agreed to let the project move on to the next phase of Design Review, which could be the final phase. Most public concerns involved the massing of the large square “donut” shaped building at the heart of the project – board members suggested perhaps “eroding” its western side and building up its eastern side, to allow more sunshine in the courtyard. They’re also asking architects to look at whether they really want the potentially relocated Seaview building to be the complex’s main entry – they’re asking to see entryway options when the project comes back for the “recommendations” round.
From today’s edition of the twice-weekly Land Use Information Bulletin: The city has approved “administrative design review” for the seven-unit project across the alley from Cactus at 3008 63rd SW (map). The decision can be read here; the deadline for appeals is May 28, and the online notice explains how they can be filed.
Not far away, AT&T Wireless is seeking approval to replace two rooftop antennas at 6609 Admiral Way (map), the apartment building overlooking Bar-S Playfield, which has been the site of fights over other antennas (including last year’s appeal of a different application) and has long been the site of other installations. The city is accepting comments on this application; the link is at the top of this notice page.
Three toplines to share from Tuesday night’s Junction Neighborhood Organization meeting at Ginomai (a stop on Thursday night’s West Seattle Art Walk, by the way) — read on:Read More
When we showed you The Kenney‘s latest design sketches after a community meeting last week (WSB coverage here), all we had were photographs of a projection screen – but there’s good news if you’re tracking this project – now you can see the sketches clearly online, along with other information about The Kenney‘s new design-review proposal, the one that saves the iconic century-old, cupola-topped Seaview Building. The info and drawings are all viewable here, three days before the project’s next Design Review Board hearing, which is coming up this Thursday, 6:30 pm, at the Senior Center of West Seattle.
That’s architect Gene Guszkowski, showing one of the new renderings that his firm AG Architecture has drawn up since The Kenney changed its mind about demolishing the iconic century-old Seaview building as part of the $150 million redevelopment project it’s been working on since last summer (first WSB report here). He presented the new plan last night at Fauntleroy Church during a community meeting organized by the Morgan Community Association and Fauntleroy Community Association; as MoCA’s new president Deb Barker put it, “The owners and architects are here to get feedback from you”:
Barker is a former chair of the Southwest Design Review Board, whose current members will see The Kenney’s proposal a week from Thursday (6:30 pm 5/14, Senior Center of West Seattle). So what feedback was offered last night by the 30-plus in attendance? Read on for details and more photos:Read More
The meeting’s not in West Seattle, but certainly townhouse design is an issue that affects our growing, developing area, and one on which we’ve reported before, with local community leaders at the forefront of the movement. Vlad Oustimovitch, past and present (interim) Design Review Board member, suggested we share a reminder of this meeting tonight at City Hall downtown, 5:30 pm – read the full meeting notice here. The recommendations will be presented by Brandon Nicholson of Nicholson Kovalchick Architects in The Junction, who’s been working with the city as a consultant on this proposal since last year.
From the city’s latest Land Use Information Bulletin: Four months after the final Design Review Board meeting for 4502 42nd – the seven-story, 89-unit mixed-use building proposed for the corner of 42nd/Oregon (map)- its design review and “non-significance” status are final; read the decision here. The deadline for an appeal is May 18; this notice page explains how to appeal. Which is exactly what’s been done in the case of this project:
That’s the medical/office building proposed for 2743 California SW, just north of PCC. Its design review/DNS decisions have been appealed and – according to this notice – a hearing is set before the city Hearing Examiner (usually the 40th floor of the Municipal Tower downtown) at 1:30 pm May 27th.
You heard it here three weeks ago: The Kenney‘s redevelopment project no longer calls for demolition of the iconic, century-old Seaview building. So what WILL the latest version of the $150 million project look like? Tonight – your chance to be among the first to see the revised design proposal, as the Morgan Community Association and Fauntleroy Community Association invite you to a gathering (as announced here) to take a look, and share your thoughts, before the project’s next Southwest Design Review Board meeting on May 14. Tonight’s meeting is at 7:30 pm, Fauntleroy Church (here’s a map).
That’s Link, the 200-unit apartment/retail building Harbor Properties (whose Mural Apartments sponsor WSB) is planning at 38th/Alaska (map). Today’s city Land Use Information Bulletin includes DPD decisions on the project (read them here), including final approval of Design Review (here’s our report on its second and final Design Review meeting last September) and “determination of nonsignificance.” If you are interested in appealing the decisions, this page has a link explaining how – the deadline is May 14. Link is to be built along 38th on a site currently occupied by West Seattle Montessori School (WSB sponsor) and a former Huling shop; WSMS is moving to a new location next school year.
Just received a flurry of e-mails wondering about loud picketing at the Capco Plaza/Altamira Apartments site north across Alaska from Jefferson Square. Heading out to check; there have been short bursts of picketing at several West Seattle construction sites in recent weeks, and it’s previously been the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters targeting a subcontractor at a site (here’s our story from March; here’s our story with video from late February; we also saw and heard them, chanting via bullhorn, at an Alki remodeling site about two weeks ago). Often it’s a fairly short demonstration, although the one in late February went on for a few hours. (Added: Two e-mails say the signs indicate the target is K2MG.)
2:42 PM UPDATE: Went by just before 2 pm – unless they’ve come back since, it appears to be over.
2:10 PM WEDNESDAY: Just left in comments:
I am an owner of K2MG and I apologize to all of you who were effected by the Carpenter union protest at the Junction Construction site.
K2MG is an Open Merit Shop, which believes in allowing the employees the right to help in determining wages and working conditions. K2MG believes in the system of Free Enterprise and that, the employer must have concern for the general welfare of the employees and that there must be a fair compensation for work performed. Similarly, we believe that the employee has an obligation for satisfactory performance of assigned work.
The PNRCC claims they have a labor dispute with K2MG however; the description of a Labor Dispute is when the company’s employees are unhappy with their employer. K2MG can proudly say our employees are very happy with the wages they receive along with our benefit package K2MG provides. The Unions main goal appears to be to force our company out of business by their negative and untrue campaign to discredit our company and others like ours with intent to gain a larger market for the local and national Union drywall contractors.
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