That’s the “early design guidance” document for Áegis Living‘s planned retirement center at 4700 SW Admiral Way, providing the most details yet on what the Redmond-based company plans for the former Life Care Center site. We first reported in November 2013 that Áegis had bought the site, and subsequently reported more details about the project over ensuing months, including this February 2014 report. According to the project page on the city Department of Planning and Development website, no public meeting is planned for the project because it’s going through “administrative design review,” which means the review is done by city staff without involvement of the Design Review Board, though written public comment is solicited and accepted. The document now available online summarizes the project:
The proposed project will demolish the existing structure and construct a new Aegis community composed of approximately 48 Assisted Living apartments and 32 Memory Care apartments.
Both the Assisted Living and Memory Care units will be grouped into smaller neighborhoods that focus on community activities and dining as well as events with the other neighborhoods. These spaces will include dining, living rooms, activity rooms, and a cafe – all of which are distributed throughout the building which will activate various portions of the façade. Outdoor gardens and terraces will be provided, allowing residents to have access to the outdoors.
The proposed project will be a three-story wood structure over a one-story concrete parking level. The terracing of the building and the utilization of the natural site grade will present a facade more in line with a two- to three-story structure at the adjacent street levels on SW Waite and SW Admiral.
A covered drop-off area will be incorporated along the driveway on SW Admiral Way for resident use. The front entry will be in close proximity to both bus stops along SW Admiral. Visitor vehicle access and staff parking will be accessed off of SW Waite Street.
If you can’t see it in the full design document by architects GGLO, embedded above (which also can be accessed on the city website here), this is the massing (size/shape) option described as “preferred”:
Perhaps of more note than before, due to the Admiral Way Safety Project discussion, 36 offstreet parking spaces are proposed for the building – mostly in a garage, with its entry off SW Waite. Also of note from the design document: “The proposed project aims to use a stucco facade in keeping with the client’s vision of a Mediterranean oasis.” And: “For an urban neighborhood the site has an extensive tree canopy. On site there is a steep slope with a dense ravine of trees on the south corner. This large stand of trees will be preserved and there will be limited disturbance of the steep slope areas.”
HOW TO COMMENT: According to the city website, the official notice of this will go out on Thursday (May 28th), and that will start a two-week comment period, through June 10th. You can get a jump on that by e-mailing comments to the assigned planner, Holly Godard, at holly.godard@seattle.gov, referring to project 3017747, 4700 SW Admiral Way.
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