(Roughed-out footprint for future project at Junction 7-11 site, as shown at “Early Outreach” meeting)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
The city’s new-ish “Early Outreach for Design Review” process has launched extremely early in the case of one West Seattle project.
Architects for the future redevelopment of the West Seattle Junction 7-11 site confirmed at this week’s “Early Outreach” community chat that the mixed-use project is still 4 years away – the store has a lease until then.
And after the project’s built, the architects revealed, the 7-11 may have a new home in its ground-floor commercial space – they’re talking about it right now.
A trio from Cone Architecture was at the Senior Center of West Seattle for the “Early Outreach” meeting Monday evening. That made it a one-to-one ratio between presenters and attendees with ample time for Q&A and everyone sitting at the same table.
The project is on record at 4800 Erskine Way, sold to an entity of the investment/development firm Blueprint for $1.1 million in November. Almost all the presenting Monday was by Cone principal Tim Carter. The parcel is “a little tricky to design,” he explained. It’s about 7,000 square feet and if they cover more than 5,000 of that with building and paved surfaces, a water main on California would have to be replaced and enlarged, so they’re working to stay below that.
The parcel was previously zoned for 65′ height, upzoned to 75′ under HALA Mandatory Housing Affordability, and they’re going for that maximum allowable height.
Most if not all of the ~66 apartments are planned as Small Efficiency Dwelling Units; Cone explained the difference between that and the previously prevalent type of microapartments – rather than multiple units sharing a kitchen (“congregate housing”), these all have their own kitchens as well as bathrooms. The average unit size will be 300 to 350 square feet.
Since they’re not planning parking in the project, they hope to fill in the existing driveway curb cuts, which is expected to create a few on-street parking spots. Parking was the subject of the first few questions; the architects said they had worked on another little-or-no-offstreet-parking project in The Junction and that 90 percent of its residents did not own cars.
Another question – intersection safety, with street trees planned around the site after redevelopment, and one tree of size intended to be kept on the southwest corner if possible.
Will the bus stop on the southeast side of the site remain? Yes.
How many elevators? One, and two stairwells.
Other details: The building is envisioned with a “pretty stellar roof deck” to take advantage of the westward views toward Puget Sound … kitchens are planned to have induction cooktops and microwaves, while each unit will have its own washer/dryer rather than one or more central laundry rooms for the building … Construction will likely take a little over a year.
COMMENTS? A short survey is online through the end of this month – you can answer it here. There’ll be a public notice when the project officially enters the Design Review process. The assigned city planner is Tami Garrett, tami.garrett@seattle.gov.
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