Yet more updates on West Seattle development plans – this time, focused around the Design Review process:

3078 AVALON WAY ‘PACKET’ FOR NEXT DESIGN REVIEW: As reported here last month, 3078 SW Avalon Way goes back to the Southwest Design Review Board on November 21st, more than a year after its Early Design Guidance meeting (WSB coverage here). Today’s update is that the “packet” containing the newest plan for this ~100-apartment, ~60-parking-space project is now available online. Its text notes that the adjacent, almost identical project (3062 Avalon) has been canceled:

Soon after the September 13 [2012] EDG meeting, Caron Architecture was approached to design a second building on the three parcels to the north of this project. That project under DPD # 3014100, was slated to be designed concurrently with this proposal, 3013303. The schedule for this proposed project was slightly delayed so the two project schedules could synchronized. Both MUP sets were submitted within weeks of each other but the buildings were placed on hold by the owners during the MUP review period due to a myriad of factors, and the application for the other project was eventually cancelled. The decision was made late summer to continue the moving forward with this project only. Comments and concerns raised through the design review process for both buildings have been incorporated into this design, although only the EDG report for this project is specifically addressed in this presentation.

The review of 3078 SW Avalon Way is at 8 pm Thursday, November 21st, at the Senior Center of West Seattle, right after the 6:30 pm review of 3210 California SW (the meeting “packet” for that project is not yet available).

4535 44TH SW DESIGN REVIEW: Since our report that the city has scheduled a special public-comment meeting November 19th after being petitioned by neighbors concerned about this 36-unit, no-parking project in The Junction, there’s yet another date set: It’s going back before the SW Design Review Boardat 6:30 pm December 5th, also at the Senior Center of WS. The formal notice isn’t out yet but it’s listed on the city schedule. (Here’s our coverage of its previous SWDRB review back in May.)

3400 SW GRAHAM DESIGN REVIEW, BUT NO MEETING: We reported two weeks ago about the new development proposal for part of High Point’s long-in-flux site at 35th/Graham – 36 townhouses, 9 single-family houses. It is now scheduled for Administrative Design Review – which means no public meeting, but public comments will be accepted. The formal notice is scheduled to go out this Thursday, with comments accepted until November 27th. If you want to comment before that, send yours to the city planner assigned to the project, Tami Garrett, at tami.garrett@seattle.gov.

First came the scrawled comment on the signboard that wasn’t up yet when we first reported on a south Morgan Junction project that includes a 30-apartment, no-parking-space building:

Now there’s a printed, taped-up sheet with a more eloquent plea to the passerby, and a response to the scrawler, starting, “Sadly, they are not kidding”:

To be specific, as a commenter reminded readers on a separate development story published here last night, the deadline for commenting on the 6917 California SW proposal is five days away – Wednesday, November 13th (unless someone has asked the city for the two-week extension that’s usually available by request).

Since we broke the news of this proposed project in mid-October, most attention has been focused on the apartment building; as we noted then, six additional housing units are planned on the two lots north of the site, all of which have descriptions/preliminary listings online:
*Townhouse A at 6911 California SW
*Townhouse B at 6911 California SW
*Townhouse C at 6911 California SW
*Townhouse D at 6911 California SW
*Single-family home at 6913 California SW
*Single-family home at 6915 California SW

The 36 total units are proposed for three lots on which three old homes currently sit, the second, third, and fourth north of the northwest corner of California and Mills. To comment on the proposal, follow the instructions on the official notice; separate comments would be needed to mention the other parts of the project, including the lot-boundary adjustment proposed to outline the sites of the three components.

(More development updates later.)

(Under-construction microhousing at 3266 Avalon Way SW)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Ten community groups from around the city, including West Seattle’s Morgan Community Association and SeattleNERD (Neighbors Encouraging Reasonable Development), are pursuing an appeal to a city decision regarding proposed new rules for microhousing.

The verbiage and details are about as bureaucratic as it gets, but here’s what it boils down to: What they’re appealing is the Department of Planning and Development‘s “determination of non-significance” (DNS) regarding effects of the new rules (which were reported here last month, weeks AFTER the DNS was issued).

A DNS generally means no environmental-impact review/report is required. Environment, when it comes to land use, includes factors such as traffic and noise – and the groups argue that microhousing brings plenty of both. The original appeal document lists 53 of what the appellants consider environmental impacts (#39, for example, is “Failure to have a reasonable, reality-based discussion of the impact on availability of affordable housing.” Here’s the full document (PDF), or read it embedded below:

Microhousing-rules-related appeal by neighborhood groups by WestSeattleBlog

(Other documents in the case are downloadable from links on this page.) Summarizing, the appellants write that they “object to the DPD’s audacious disregard of the requirements of SEPA [the State Environmental Policy Act] … Its conclusion that the 2,842 units created by the existing, under construction, and proposed micro-housing projects will have no significant environmental impacts … would be laughable, did it not have such tragic consequences for Seattle’s natural and built environments.”

The appeal document also includes a “concern that the current definition DPD is suggesting doesn’t accurately encompass all of the microhousing being built.”

The city’s Hearing Examiner will hear the appeal; if she upholds the DPD determination, the challengers would have the option to go to court. This is scheduled for a pre-hearing conference next Wednesday (November 13), and the actual appeal hearing is set for January 7th.

Separate from this, the proposed microhousing rules need City Council approval before taking effect; no hearing/vote dates are scheduled yet.

SIDEBAR: As noted in our October coverage of the proposed rules, here are the four known West Seattle microhousing projects:

*4548 Delridge (3 stories, 16 sleeping rooms, 2 “dwelling units,” close to completion)
*3266 Avalon Way (5 stories, 56 sleeping rooms, 7 “dwelling units,” top photo)
*3050 Avalon Way (5 stories, 110 sleeping rooms, 14 “dwelling units,” not yet under construction)
*5949 California SW (4 stories, 38 sleeping rooms, 5 “dwelling units,” not yet under construction)

For the first time since a proposed standalone drugstore project became public – first reported here in late July – it’s officially listed in public records as a future CVS Pharmacy. The project proposed for 4722 Fauntleroy Way SW has yet to be scheduled for a design-review meeting. It’s been assumed that it would be CVS because of the client list of the company listed as the applicant, and because of similar applications in other areas, but now the name has formally emerged for the first time – on a liquor-license application.

Washington CVS Pharmacy, LLC, has just applied for beer/wine/spirits sales licenses for the Fauntleroy Way SW site as well as for the lower Queen Anne, Wallingford, and Burien locations that were mentioned in our July report. Other than this, no new documents regarding the West Seattle project have emerged since the ones we found in late July, mentioning a one-story, 14,500-square-foot store (the site is zoned for mixed-use development up to 8 stories). But if you’re looking for hints, you might look at the newest design proposal for the lower Queen Anne project, which goes back to Design Review next week – though keep in mind there are site differences, such as size (the smaller Queen Anne site is proposed for an underground garage, while the roughed-out “site plan” for West Seattle showed surface parking).

Almost a year has passed since Life Care Center announced it would close its nursing home at 47th/Admiral, and we finally know a bit about the 1 1/2-acre site’s future, the source of much speculation and more than a few questions. For some weeks, the real-estate listing has had the notation “pending” – as in “sale pending” – but there’s no public information until the sale closes, so we’ve just kept watching public records. Then a WSB reader pointed us to a recent magazine interview in which the CEO of Redmond-headquartered Aegis Living mentioned the company had property in West Seattle. Today, a company spokesperson confirmed that Aegis “has the property under contract.” For further details on their plan – whether renovation or new construction – we’re awaiting an interview with CEO Dwayne Clark later this month; no applications are in city records yet. Aegis Living has 14 locations in the Puget Sound area, in addition to 15 in California and one in Nevada, and describes itself as “a leader in assisted living and memory care.”

While much of WSB’s development coverage in the past few years has focused on the largest projects, neighborhoods are taking a keen interest in smaller projects too. We’re watching city files more closely these days too, after hearing from residents’ concerns that the process is hard to follow and often leaves them finding out about a change for their neighborhood when it’s too late to even try to be constructively involved in the process. So we’re expanding our ongoing development coverage. First today, one West Seattle project from today’s edition of the city’s twice-weekly Land Use Information Bulletin (to which you can subscribe via e-mail – follow that link and use the sidebar box):

(3829 California rendering by Caron Architecture, from final design-review meeting)
3829 CALIFORNIA SW APARTMENTS APPROVED, BUT … The land-use approval for this 29-apartment, 29-parking-space project is in. The site, however, remains listed for sale (as first reported here in August, two months after it passed Design Review), price reduced to $1.45 million from the original $1.6m. That doesn’t necessarily affect the city process, so the clock is now ticking on the two-week window for appeals; here’s the official approval notice. (map)

Now, three projects in city files seeking boundary changes related to smaller projects:

2420 WICKSTROM PLACE SW, ALKI: Just east of the “Alki 11” proposal that is now the subject of an appeal (reported here October 24), there’s a new filing to split one lot into three. The city file for the site shows a plan for a three-unit rowhouse and demolition of a duplex. (map)

7313 BAINBRIDGE: Another application to split one lot into three homes – as is not uncommon, depending on what other approvals are required – after construction has already begun.

The photo above is from this site just north of Lincoln Park, taken on Friday; construction is approved at this site for three single-family houses where one has been demolished. It’s yards away from the southeast border of six new single-family homes at 47th/Othello. (map)

4022 19TH SW, PIGEON POINT: A lot-boundary change has been pending here to create the sites of two new homes for which the developer is seeking construction permits, at 4022 and 4024 19th SW, on the 8,200-sf site of a century-old house at 4022. (map)

Two highly visible sites (on busy streets) where you will likely see teardown activity soon:

4101 SW OREGON, THE JUNCTION: Just east of the close-to-completion 131-unit Oregon 42 apartments, applications were filed last Wednesday to tear down an 86-year-old house and replace it with two 2-unit townhome buildings. The 4,500-square-foot lot is zoned Low-Rise 3. (map)

5457 FAUNTLEROY, FAIRMOUNT SPRINGS: The permit application is in for demolition of the 103-year-old house on this five-unit-rowhouse project with attached garages, which was approved last week, as reported here. (map)

Project in your neighborhood that you’re wondering about? E-mail us! WSB development coverage is all archived at westseattleblog.com/category/development, newest to oldest.

23 days after teardown work started at the two-building California/Alaska/42nd project site, crews are still clearing debris on the west side of the site, and tackling the underground level left after that building was demolished last week. Along the way, we’ve received a few requests for an aerial view, and local pilot/photographer Long Bach Nguyen has obliged, with two angles – top and bottom. For a comparison, here is the Seattle Municipal Archives 1957 aerial we’ve featured before – flipped and cropped – that’s SW Alaska at right, though the historic photo didn’t show California:

Back to the current view – here’s the aerial looking from north toward south – the tents on California are from Sunday’s Harvest Festival:

(Both views also show the crane and excavation for the 4730 California project.)

The California/Alaska/42nd demolition is the last major tearing down for at least a few months. The next one could be on the 4745 40th SW site, where a permit is pending and one tenant of the existing small office building has told us they were told to be out by the end of November.

Some development proposals that might interest you, particularly if you live nearby:

35th AND GRAHAM: This big, long-vacant High Point parcel has had development proposals fall through before – most smartingly for many community members, a once-intended mixed-use development with a grocery store – and now it appears there’s another proposal: 9 single-family houses and 18 duplexes. Online files indicate the project will seek Administrative Design Review, and that it involves Lennar Homes, which is also the residential developer for the much-scrutinized 4755 Fauntleroy Way SW apartment/Whole Foods proposal. The site plan filed this month does not appear to include a strip directly fronting 35th, though. We have a message out to the Seattle Housing Authority seeking more information about this project’s status.

6917 CALIFORNIA SW: We first reported almost two weeks ago on the proposal for a 30-unit, no-offstreet-parking apartment building here (and other adjacent development), including a “lot boundary adjustment.” A sign is up for the apartment proposal because the application has now been formally filed, which opens the comment period.

4522 DELRIDGE WAY SW: A new application to the city seeks permits for four single-family homes at 4522 Delridge Way SW.

ALSO IN NORTH DELRIDGE: The ND Neighborhood Council mailing list had first word of a proposal at 4150 Delridge Way SW, which on this page mentions one 6-unit “rowhouse” building, but on the “site plan” associated with the project shows two 6-unit buildings.

Speaking of rowhouses:

5457 FAUNTLEROY WAY SW: Today’s Land Use Information Bulletin includes an announcement of approval of the five-unit rowhouse planned on the Fauntleroy/Findlay site that currently holds an century-old house (our first mention of this proposal was back in June). The deadline for appeals is November 12th. Read the full decision here.

HOW TO COMMENT ON ANY PROJECT: For any of the above – or any other that’s in progress – this DPD page explains how to comment (that includes appeals).

Didn’t get a chance to publish these photos on Thursday because of everything else that was going on; it’s another view from the California/Alaska demolition work at the future site of two 7-story apartment/retail buildings that Chicago-based Equity Residential will build over an underground parking garage. Unlike the building torn down next door at 42nd/Alaska, the one to the west had a basement, and that’s what’s shown in our photos. Some say it included a morgue back when the building included a second-floor hospital; in later years, ArtsWest used some of the space for storage. Today, the demolition equipment is pushing debris into this basement area, but yesterday at midday, it was mostly exposed:

The sidewalks around the site will be open in time for Sunday’s Harvest Festival in The Junction, which will close California and Alaska between Oregon, Edmunds, 42nd, and 44th, starting fairly early in the morning for setup, and continuing until everything is cleared after the festival ends at 2.

Another group of West Seattle neighbors is formally challenging a development plan.

This time, it’s the neighbors on 55th SW in Alki who are concerned about the effects of an 11-unit “rowhouse” development. This is the group who petitioned for a city hearing, and got that hearing in July; earlier this month, they learned the development would be approved (here’s our Oct. 17th report), and at the time, they did not believe they would be able to muster the resources required for an appeal.

Today, neighbor Marie McKinsey tells WSB they put one together after all:

Today, Alki Neighborhoods for Sensible Growth, a new association comprised of neighbors affected by the Alki 11 rowhouse project MUP 3014675, filed an appeal challenging the DPD’s decision to approve this development. … I am attaching the two documents filed today (here and here)

There’s a lot to review here, but among other interesting findings is this one: the city apparently violated its own rules by approving LBAs (lot boundary adjustments) prior to doing the SEPA review. The procedure is supposed to be SEPA review first and then LBAs are decided afterward or concurrently with the SEPA analysis. I believe the LBAs were approved August 27th. The SEPA decision was published October 10.

It is impressive that our neighborhood has been able to come together to form an association, raise money and mount an appeal in the few days we have had available to us. The city notified us on October 15th of the decision and gave us only until October 24th to appeal.

McKinsey has been chronicling the situation on her website here. She says the association will be represented by land-use lawyer Cynthia Kennedy, who also represented the Benchview neighborhood in its recent case. No hearing date(s) set yet.

What was left of the building on the southeast corner of California/Alaska in The Junction was gone by noon, midway through the third week of demolition/clearing work at the site of two future seven-story mixed-use buildings. We have a “before” photo shared a few hours earlier by King County Councilmember Joe McDermott:

In the accompanying e-mail, he shared a memory:

Foggy footage of the old People’s Bank building as the only thing left on the north end of the Junction’s southeast block. Just taken as I transferred to the Water Taxi shuttle to avoid the traffic this morning. Alyce Miller used to give me Husky bank deposits to walk over to the bank.

That’s a reference to McDermott’s days working for nearby Husky Deli. The corner building once held People’s Bank and West Seattle Hospital – and a second story, gone long before this final demolition.

Cleanup is now complete on the eastern side of the site at 42nd/Alaska and is to be finished on this side by Friday afternoon, so the debris is gone before the West Seattle Junction Harvest Festival on Sunday.

(MID-AFTERNOON UPDATE: Scroll/click ahead to bottom of story; building’s now mostly gone)

12:28 PM: As of noon, the western building on the heart-of-The-Junction development site was more than half gone. This one has far more history than the eastern building, which was torn down first; the one on the southeast corner of California/Alaska was the home of West Seattle Hospital for years, with multiple families welcoming new additions each day during the peak of the baby boom. Click ahead for photos and video from earlier this morning, when the facade started coming down (update: more images added @ 3 pm):

Read More

You won’t notice it yet if you drive by on California or Alaska, but from 42nd SW, you can see that demolition has indeed begun on the remaining building on the site of Equity Residential’s 2-building, ~200-apartment project. A closer look shows long-hidden interior brick walls:

As discussed in comments on recent WSB coverage of teardown elsewhere on the site, this building was once – when it had a second story – home to the West Seattle Hospital, which later moved to the site on SW Holden that is now home to Navos. Meantime, another reminder that sidewalks on California and Alaska are closed – temporarily, as noted here Friday – while this stage of demolition continues for several days.

A second project is now on the Southwest Design Review Board‘s agenda for November 21st, in addition to 3210 California SW: The city’s tentative schedule for that night now shows the second and potentially final review for 3078 Avalon Way SW, now described on the city project page as an 8-story, 108-apartment, 61-parking-space proposal. That’s fewer spaces than were mentioned when it passed Early Design Guidance in its first board review in September 2012, from which the image at left was taken (as noted then, this is in the zone where new construction isn’t required to have any on-site parking at all). As shown in WSB coverage of the September 2012 meeting, a sizable group of neighbors has been following the project closely, and expanded its attention to other proposals in the area; most live on 32nd SW, a single-family-home neighborhood just north of the project site. The tentative plan for the November 21st meeting is for 3210 California to be reviewed at 6:30 pm, 3078 Avalon at 8, at the Senior Center of West Seattle (California/Oregon in The Junction).

For more than a week, we’ve been tracking demolition on the site of Equity Residential‘s two-building West Seattle Junction project. Above is the east half, at 42nd/Alaska, where final cleanup is under way. Susan Melrose of the WS Junction Association tells WSB they’ve been notified that demolition will begin Monday on the west-side building at California/Alaska:

Note the protective enclosures on the trees; Melrose also says that sidewalks around that building will be closed TEMPORARILY for next week’s demolition work.

First, she shares the notice from the general contractor, Andersen Construction:

Demolition of the West Building located at 4706 California Avenue SW will commence on Monday 10/21/13. The sidewalks and parking located along California Avenue and SW Alaska Street will be closed to pedestrians during this time. Demolition work will be complete by 10/25/13.

Next, Melrose’s update, stressing that this is a temporary closure:

The Junction Association is working with the construction company to minimize impacts to our neighborhood and to keep The Junction walkable. I would like to convey to the neighborhood that this will be the only time that the sidewalks on California Ave and Alaska St will be closed. The next 18 months might be noisy and at times inconvenient, but your loyal Junction businesses look forward to your continued patronage. The demolition of this building is a notable day in Junction history.

Some of that history was discussed in this WSB update, which included a half-century-old aerial photo of the area.

Project backstory: The Equity buildings are both planned at seven stories, totaling about 200 apartments, with more than 200 underground parking spaces and ground-floor retail (no tenants announced yet). The project went through the city approval process under its previous ownership, Bellevue-based Conner Homes, which put it up for sale in August 2011 (WSB coverage here) and closed the sale to Chicago-based Equity Residential in December 2011 (WSB coverage here). The businesses in the two buildings were cleared out in summer of last year, but construction was delayed – without explanation – until now.

(WSB photo, April 2013)
Three months after dozens of Alki neighbors voiced their concerns about a rowhouse project, they have received word that the city has approved it. That’s the word from Marie McKinsey, who along with her neighbors on 55th SW sought and received a public meeting at which they spoke out. We first wrote in April about their petition for a hearing on the proposal for 11 units in three “rowhouse” buildings on the parcels currently known as 2414, 2418, and 2424 55th SW (map). In response, the city scheduled a July hearing at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in North Delridge, and more than 25 people attended it, with about half of them speaking. They stressed that they weren’t opposed to development, but to the density of this particular proposal, and its potential effects on wildlife, stormwater runoff, traffic, and parking, all concerns voiced under the auspices of the State Environmental Policy Act review of the project. Here’s the decision (embedded below or read it here), dated October 10th, though the neighbors did not receive written notification until October 15th. As McKinsey points out, the approval includes a few conditions:

She hasn’t heard of any neighbor prepared to appeal the decision; the deadline for that would be October 24th. The city pages for the project are here.

8:17 PM: The project is getting some discussion at the Alki Community Council meeting that’s under way right now, including a mention of McKinsey’s website and its extensive documentation on the project, as well as a suggestion that ACC members might be able to assist with a possible challenge or a longer-term look at whether zoning could be re-examined in the general area.

South of Morgan Junction, development plans are on file for the sites of three houses on the west side of the 6900 block of California SW. For starters, the three lots themselves are part of a “lot-boundary adjustment” proposal.

The largest proposed structure is a 3-story, 30-unit apartment building with no parking, proposed for the southernmost site, 6917 California SW, which now holds the 102-year-old house in the photo above. Meantime, 6911 California SW, the 99-year-old house in our next photo, is proposed as the address of a 4-unit rowhouse townhouse building.

And 2 single-family homes are proposed along the alley on the west side of the sites, at the address 6915 California, currently holding this 99-year-old house:

The lots are zoned LR-2, which according to the city guide says homes can be up to 25 feet, rowhouses and apartments up to 35 feet (that’s the maximum with bonus height for a roof of a certain pitch). The developer for the rowhouses/houses sites is listed on city webpages as DL Builders, currently about to build two houses on teardown sites a few blocks uphill, in the 7300 block of California SW.

(Click image for larger view)
What could be the final Southwest Design Review Board meeting for 3210 California SW now has a (technically tentative) date: November 21st, 6:30 pm, Senior Center of West Seattle. The 5-story, ~150-apartment, ~168-parking-space project reappeared today on the city Department of Planning and Development schedule. The proposal made it through the Early Design Guidance stage of the process in two meetings, April 11th and June 27th. At least a week before the meeting, developers Intracorp and architects Nicholson Kovalchick will go public with a proposed final draft of the building’s design; we’ll publish an update when it’s available. The drawing above is from the building “massing” taken to the second EDG meeting, which the developers told WSB is similar to what they would be including in their permit application afterward.

Went to The Junction to check on the teardown work that began earlier this week at the site of two future apartment/retail buildings. The eastern building is now all gone, with the former Rocksport space next to go.

Just yesterday morning, Brian Presser from TouchTech Systems a couple blocks away caught the demolition crew bringing down part of the copper-tone awning:

Today’s “after” view, looking west at that spot:

The demolition crew is working east to west and is likely to start on the California/Alaska building next week.