West Seattle development: Charlestown Café site project gets first Design Review date; other projects now on schedule too

| Development | West Seattle news

(EDITOR’S NOTE: In mid-January, the 1/23 Design Review meeting was pushed back to 1/30)
Four more projects have been added to the Southwest Design Review Board‘s calendar for early next year.

Most notably, January ~~23rd~~ 30th is tentatively scheduled for the board’s first look at 3824 California SW, the 30-unit project proposed for the two-and-a-half-years-vacant Charlestown Café site, first reported here six months ago. The 30 units are now described on the city website is now outlined as 17 live-work units and 13 townhouses. The tentative date for this review is 6:30 pm January 23 30, followed by, at 8 pm, the first look at 4505 42nd SW (here’s a map), 50 apartments over 4,500 square feet of retail and 16 parking spaces. That’s a change from our first report back in October.

Then, tentatively set for 6:30 pm February 6th, 4400 SW Alaska (map) goes back to the SWDRB; it is now described as 36 residential units, 4 live-work units, and 5 parking spaces. (Here’s our report on its July review.)

We’ve already mentioned that 3078 SW Avalon Way (map) is on the calendar to go back before the board at 6:30 pm January 16th; now a second project is added for 8 pm that night, 4433 42nd SW (here’s a map), 78 residential units, 2 live-work units, and a 52-space underground parking garage. It’s been reviewed twice previously.

All of the aforementioned reviews are penciled in for the Senior Center of West Seattle, which is where all the board’s meetings have been held for some months now, after several years of bouncing between various community-meeting rooms.

P.S. The city’s page explaining the Design Review program is here.

WSEA December 13, 2013 (2:46 pm)

30 living locations and 16 parking spots. Sounds about right for west seattle. we all know that nobody drives a car in west seattle.

nyhopi December 13, 2013 (3:44 pm)

Can we P L E A S E stop these developments with little to no parking please! I do not own a car yet all of the buses are packed and when friends come over to my house that I have lived in for nearly 20 years they can not park becuase all of the workers of retail and construction projects are parked on my block.

This is just going to get worse with the new projects with deficient parking spaces.

I don’t just want to kvetch here I really want to know what I and we can do about it. Can someone please list the phone numbers and email address I can start to contact PLEASE?

WSB December 13, 2013 (3:52 pm)

NYHopi, it’s fairly simple. If you can spare an hour and a half, watch the “how we got to this point” development meeting, featuring explanations by city officials and knowledgeable neighborhood leaders, which we videotaped last week:
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If you can’t … short version: The law has to be changed. Right now, the law allows development with no parking in what’s considered “frequent transit” areas. The City Council and mayor make the laws. They are the ones who changed it just a couple years ago to enable this, and they can change it back, or amend it, or whatever.
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New mayor takes office in a few weeks. One new councilperson is coming in. Contacts for political leaders are via http://seattle.gov/council and http://seattle.gov/mayor.
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Getting involved with your neighborhood council is also an excellent step.
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Others will certainly have additional advice.
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TR

Alphonse December 13, 2013 (3:52 pm)

WSEA is mistaken. The 30 living units have 30 parking spaces. It’s the 50 apartments with 4500 sf of retail that have 16 parking spaces.

Seattlite December 13, 2013 (4:03 pm)

WSB TR — Thank you for reminding the people that visit this blog that it is the mayor/city council that make Seattle’s laws. That is why Seattle is so mismanaged — the wrong leaders keep getting voted into office. It’s up to the Seattle voters to research candidates before voting and hope that the elected candidate will stay true to their word.

fj December 13, 2013 (4:45 pm)

meanwhile…. bus service likely greatly reduced. so that makes it even MORE fun.
I’m all for urban living, or I wouldn’t be living in the city, but they need transportation solutions. REAL ones. light rail, subways, etc.

I’ll start working on my jet pack now.

JayDee December 13, 2013 (5:31 pm)

I have been to Vancouver BC; they have mass transit and buses running down every major “arterial” every 10 minutes. You need walk only 4-5 blocks to reach a well travelled bus route. And Voila! there is your bus.
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Here, well you hope One Bus Away is having a good day, and pray as you launch the App. Hope it isn’t Sunday since no one shops on Sunday–once per hour “service” is the norm. If they reduce service even more? Buy a car. Time is money so get to work early (6:00) and leave by 3:00 and you’ll be golden.

wetone December 13, 2013 (6:03 pm)

Don’t expect too much from our new leaders in the stop building area, it’s a little late and they need the money to cover the cities past and present bad spending habits, projects. You can plan on paying more usage taxes, increased sales and property taxes. With big promises to study and fix the traffic woes. Anyone with common sense or has lived here a very long time could see the problems we were going to have with our limited road system and how I-5 affects the traffic here. It will only get worse as the population increases. The majority of people that live in W/S work through out the city, many have families and they will always need a vehicle or two. No matter how good of transit system or bicycle system we have, it will only work for a small percentage of people commuting in and out of West Seattle.

Todd December 13, 2013 (7:02 pm)

So, that’s 177 residential units, 23 live/work units, 4,500 sf of retail and a total of…73 parking spots (or 103 if the previous poster is correct). Yeah, that’s great. Add those to the other projects – including one on California that has…ZERO parking spots and it’s gonna be a hoot!

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