At the design meeting yesterday, one of the panel mentioned he would like to ask the developer to put forward a design with one less floor, but he felt bad because so much money had already been spent. That is the risk the developer chose to take by proposing a building that, although allowed by the code, was clearly out of keeping in height bulk and scale for it’s circumstances (edge of zone, no alley etc) and anyone could see would provoke a long drawn out process and not necessarily be approved. The developer made his choice and now has to deal with the consequences.

I am sure these buildings are designed with heavy margins to offset the cost of these endless proceedings. Someone even a LLC has to pay construction and loan costs while the months drag out for these meetings. Every redesign costs money, and tempts a lawsuit against the city that will raise all our taxes. Its great people own houses, but paying taxes doesn’t give you the right to use your victim complex (demonized!) to block zoned development by pretending your personal idea of what west seattle is constitutes an adhoc HOA.

Affordable housing is related to supply and demand. The more people block these developments the less gets built.

This is why smaller builders build junk townhouses all over residential neighborhoods, because the zoning allows them to skip all these meetings, where they get seattle processed to death about awful boxes, weak architecture, inconsiderate buildings and them being evil for making a living as a builder.

This exact process, and the nimbys who drag them on forever ( 5 meetings so far! ), is why the only development we get is investment big box, or townhouse.

They used the same ‘affordable housing’ schtick about a development near me. Do you want to know how much the house is going for? 1.2 mil. That is most decidedly not affordable housing and is more than paid for the lot that was split.

Unless they’re forced to do otherwise, developers tend to have their bottom line in mind. Without ‘obstructionists’ you’re going to have a city full of throw-away buildings.

Would you like to surmise what the average rent is going to look like in this building? I can promise you it won’t be affordable.

The comments on these threads are the same as the meetings, people doing whatever they can to try to stop density, for the same tired me first reasons, traffic, views, parking and appearance. Despite it being done in the tiny fraction of areas in the city, and neighborhoods that are properly zoned for it.

You don’t have a right to free parking, or your commute to never change.

The city desperately needs affordable housing, these meetings, and demands to make smaller, more expensive buildings aren’t helping.

I also took some pleasure in seeing the frustration of the architect and steam coming out of his ears at the end of the meeting. If I were him, I’d be looking for a new job. This design is a complete failure. Can’t believe he and his team had the audacity to claim this latest design was a worthwhile attempt. What a waste of everyone’s time.

I also don’t think the developers, architect or DPD have any idea who they are up against. The neighbors are committed to fighting the height, bulk, scale and design of this building for as long as it takes. Bring on a 6th or 7th or 8th design review. We are prepared.

The only willing people left for badly needed infill and development are LLCs and out of state investors with lawyers and the time and patience to go through the endless meetings that would bleed out a good developer who wanted something that was “in scale” whatever that means.

I encourage anyone concerned about this type of cheap, throw-away architecture to come to the next Design Review Board meeting and express your opinion. This type of project will continue to be built until there’s enough resistance.

This proposed project is far out of scale with anything here, and the design looks cheap and ordinary, adding no character to the Admiral neighborhood. The developer tweaked the project slightly but they are essentially the same massive, high density mixed use structures as originally proposed. It looks like the crummy, fast construction in Ballard, with no regard to appearance or impacts to the neighborhoods over time.

In response to a question about traffic impacts, we were told that they had already been addressed during SEPA review and were not part of this meeting. It’s a critically important aspect of this project and needs to be part of this conversation. This project will very significantly increase traffic on California, which is essentially a two-lane road since parking takes up the outside lanes. I hope that the next meeting provides the opportunity to discuss this.

One of the commenters during the meeting said that this project would never have been proposed in Wallingford, Madison Park, or Mercer Island. The question behind his statement was why West Seattle would allow itself to be the dumping ground for an oversized, poorly designed project such as this one. Why indeed.