Coming soon to a street near you

[Kelly]

The developer responsible for this beautiful project https://westseattleblog.com/2007/07/gatewood-townhouse-tussle-gets-a-citywide-spotlight and http://jetcityjournal.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/04/gaming-the-seattle-dpd-permitting-process.html is snatching up West Seattle land along 49th Ave SW and subdividing lots. He recently tore down a 1900 log cabin on this street along with 5 enormous trees, one of which was “exceptional,” as it measured 36″ in diameter. The others weren’t too shabby, either, measuring 29″, 28″, 27″, and 14″, according to an arborist he paid. The land was actually a lot and a half, so he got the boundary line adjusted and now instead of a historic log cabin and enormous old-growth trees, there will be two skinny aluminum boxes right next to each other.

And, just down the street, at 5431 49th Ave SW, http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/luib/Notice.aspx?BID=574&NID=11640 he’s proposing putting 2 homes on one lot in an environmentally critical area with a steep slope. But, DPD is still taking comments on this proposal until 12/22. It is Project 3011882. I intend to put my 2 cents in.

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[DOC]

Just think of when that log cabin was built. Some guy decided to cut down lots of perfect, straight trees and build a house out of them, destroying all the growth on that plot of land. Or on that note, I’m sure no plot in West Seattle that currently hosts a building has ever hosted a tree. It sucks tearing down the log cabin, but the trees, not so much.

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[The Velvet Bulldog]

Actually, taking down trees DOES suck. Seattle has lost 2% of its tree canopy in just the last six years. The City now has a plan to increase tree cover in Seattle from the current 22% to 30%. When you think that trees don’t matter, think of this: they remove pollutant particulates from the air–including carbon, they stabilize soil by removing water from it thereby prevent the soil from becoming saturated and prone to sliding (important in our hilly area.) Their canopies also keep rainwater from hitting the ground in the first place, further protecting the soil from saturation, and the canopy shades out most of our troublesome invasive plants (think blackberry!) They also provide habitat for birds and animals and regulate the temperature, not to mention the aesthetic benefits they provide. Oh, and there’s that little thing called Oxygen… These are all ecosystem services–impossible to live without and also nearly impossible to place a monetary value on, which is why many people are very cavalier about removing trees. Development will of course continue, but it needs to be done in a manner that allows us all to keep breathing.

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[christopherboffoli]

Somehow after reading this post, and clicking through to read the cited links, the issue of the trees seems to be a bit of a red herring.

I suppose how one reacts to this post depends on whether one values the romantic notion of a plot of land occupied by some trees and an old log cabin (which I admit, does have its own charming appeal) over increased density, improved use of available space in a large city which will be growing considerably in the coming decades, and housing units for new people in our community who will (based on the likelihood of the kind of people inclined to purchase skinny aluminum boxes) potentially be well-educated/creative/productive/innovative/positive additions to our community, our economy and our tax base.

I’m generally against those developers who game the system for their own financial gain without considering the community and surroundings in which they build. I also abhor a lot of the tasteless, bland, cookie cutter construction that lacks creativity and architectural integrity. And I favor architects and developers who are sensitive to topography and environment, not to mention those who are adept at finding design solutions to the issues of bridging the gap between the scale of new structures and the older neighborhoods around them.

But where you lose me in these types of conversations is when it starts to get bogged down with a lot of unstated fear (fear of change, of new people, fear that we’re not going to have space to drive our large cars everywhere and park them for free within six feet of our desired destination, fear that we’re moving away from some kind of 1950’s Levittown dream of detached single-family houses surrounded by the requisite chemically dependent and water thirsty lawn. And how whatever gets built in 2010 somehow has to adhere to some kind of context to a neighborhood of prosaic ramblers or watered-down Craftsman style houses because someone made an arbitrary decision back in the 1920’s or 1950’s so that now we have no latitude to use a different design language because a modern building simply would “stick out.”

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[JanS]

Levittown? Now there’s a place I haven’t heard about in quite some time.

Ya gotta admit, Christopher…the house that Mr. Dufus built in this woman’s front/back yard is pretty ugly…at least, in my estimation. I certainly wouldn’t like it in the neighborhood I had my house in, when I was lucky enough to have a house. When I sold my house, it had 3 lots, a couple of fir trees, one of which was big and really beautiful. It had 6 plum trees, three apple trees, a cherry tree, and a pear tree (no partridges). Now? There isn’t a tree on the lot..not one. They devastated it. It is now barren, except for a huge sandbox and a trampoline in the back yard…sad.

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[HelperMonkey]

what we definitely do NOT need is more density without the infrastructure to support it. West Seattle is suffering right now because of all the ugly townhouses and condos that went up in the last decade.

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[christopherboffoli]

JanS: I’m with you. Trees are great. And I’m definitely NOT in favor of the lowest common denominator faux-Craftsman,/vinyl-sided/ hollow-door variety of townhouses that are so common these days. Not really defending this developer, per se.

HelperMonkey: There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of electricity, natural gas, municipal water, capacity for garbage pick-up, police and fire coverage in my neighborhood despite increased development. I can usually find plenty of seats on the water taxi or the bus and lots of places to ride my bike. So by infrastructure you mean…..what? Roads and parking spaces?

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[CeeBee]

Infrastructure does have a very specific meaning. When the Urban Village Neighborhood Planning effort was going on, each neighborhood had to evaluate the proposed density targets against the existing capital infrastructure. Beside the obvious transportation and transit there were about 6 other catagories of data. In our neighborhood, we were coming close to maxing out the capacity of the CSO system (and as later evidenced by the Murray project), and also for the location of fire response – we reviewed the firefighters per capita and response time, for example. I’m hanging on to all that data, for review when the 10 year Neighborhood Plan update cycle comes through.

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[redblack]

<sarcasm>but… but… but… how will we pay for such luxury items as sewer and water mains and fire departments?

you can’t possibly be proposing some kind of new taxes on small businesses and entrepeneurs, can you, ceebee?

and we don’t need citizens telling citizens what they should do with their private property, no matter how abhorrent it is!

enough is enough!</sarcasm>

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[CeeBee]

redblack ??? I wasn’t proposing anything. I was just telling christopherb that infrastructure encompasses many catagories that people don’t usually think about, and when proposing additional density the city has the data to evaluate the impacts. I was thinking that a better example I could have given was that when proposing that building heights be raised, an question asked is if the local station’s ladder truck can reach the new heights. If not, that situation would have to be addressed.

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[redblack]

ceebee: i was joking. your posts suggest that the city actually do something pro-active to support greater density, which requires capital. but the current anti-taxation political climate hamstrings municipalities when they’re trying to fund infrastructure improvements.

urban growth and density requires investment from both the public and private sectors, and while pro-business folks are all about developing private property, they seldom think about how that development impacts our aging utility systems. or, as you point out, how local emergency responders can access and provide rescue services for new developments and denser residency during disasters.

what’s worse is that any suggestion of raising taxes to improve those systems is met with scorn for “wasteful big government spending.”

any conversations about increasing local density should automatically include increased public funding to support said development.

btw, is ceebee and acronym? construction battalion? (sea bee?) citizens’ band?

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[CeeBee]

LOL, ceebee are my initials. I used to used cb and then someone with views about 180 from mine started posting (not christopherb in his early days) so I ‘expanded’

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