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This guy bugs me: > “It’s concerning that we’re ripping down part of our heritage and building glass boxes,” You can't complain about rising rents with one si

This guy bugs me: > “It’s concerning that we’re ripping down part of our heritage and building glass boxes,” You can't complain about rising rents with one side of your mouth and say crap with this with the other. Rents in Seattle are still rising fast (even after the Bay Area is starting to cool off a bit), and the only reason it's not significantly worse is because there actually are a crap-ton of new dense housing developments in progress, even if it's not enough.

btym 9y ago
Yeah, what exactly are developers supposed to do if not this? Seattle is not built in the best place for growth, we're surrounded by water. It's either denser housing or hour-plus commutes.
idlewords 9y ago
A lot of the heritage buildings are not designed to survive the kind of earthquakes that Seattle is prone to. So you can either tear them down now for development, or let the Big One do it later, with great loss of life.
- walrus01 9y ago
  heritage brick buildings look quaint and cute, sure, but dying crushed to death by bricks and mortar in a 7.7 earthquake seems like a pretty bad way to go. There are ways to structurally retrofit them to modern standards, a lot of the 100+ year old buildings in Vancouver's gastown have internal X-bracing of steel beams and earthquake retrofits, but it's not cheap.
  - idlewords 9y ago
    Seattle and Vancouver need to plan for 8+ earthquakes. There shouldn't be a single brick building in either city.
    - njarboe 9y ago
      There have been seven large Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes in the last 3500 yrs or so. About a 500 year repeat interval. The last one was in precisely 1700, known from historical records. So, on average, the next one would be in 200 yrs (but could come tomorrow or even further into the future). Building new construction to survive such a quake is probably a good idea, but tearing down old ones seems like not the best investment in resources given such a low probability event.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I can understand his practical concerns ("Those glass boxes won’t have a Dan’s Belltown Grocery, a little pizza joint; you’ll miss out on the divey bars, the dress sellers"), and I agree, but people need affordable housing first. Charming neighborhood businesses are awesome and I hope there's a way to preserve them, but if only the rich can afford to live near those businesses, it's just another kind of elitism.
- njarboe 9y ago
  I think this could be possible in the glass boxes if they had many small spaces of retail on the ground floor or two and sold them to business owners (like condos). I wish they would do that in Oakland. I like increased density and we need the housing, but it is a bit sad to see 20 individual lots get eaten up by huge condo projects. Even sadder to see the new construction go up in smoke though.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  >Those glass boxes won’t have a Dan’s Belltown Grocery, a little pizza joint; you’ll miss out on the divey bars, the dress sellers" Why shouldn't they? There is no reason you can't give the ground floor to bussinesses, and have living units upstairs.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    I don't know the market forces involved, but I would expect fancy high-rises to have mostly major chains in their retail slots, not local businesses.

btym 9y ago

Yeah, what exactly are developers supposed to do if not this? Seattle is not built in the best place for growth, we're surrounded by water. It's either denser housing or hour-plus commutes.

idlewords 9y ago

A lot of the heritage buildings are not designed to survive the kind of earthquakes that Seattle is prone to. So you can either tear them down now for development, or let the Big One do it later, with great loss of life.

walrus01 9y ago
heritage brick buildings look quaint and cute, sure, but dying crushed to death by bricks and mortar in a 7.7 earthquake seems like a pretty bad way to go. There are ways to structurally retrofit them to modern standards, a lot of the 100+ year old buildings in Vancouver's gastown have internal X-bracing of steel beams and earthquake retrofits, but it's not cheap.
- idlewords 9y ago
  Seattle and Vancouver need to plan for 8+ earthquakes. There shouldn't be a single brick building in either city.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    There have been seven large Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes in the last 3500 yrs or so. About a 500 year repeat interval. The last one was in precisely 1700, known from historical records. So, on average, the next one would be in 200 yrs (but could come tomorrow or even further into the future). Building new construction to survive such a quake is probably a good idea, but tearing down old ones seems like not the best investment in resources given such a low probability event.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

I can understand his practical concerns ("Those glass boxes won’t have a Dan’s Belltown Grocery, a little pizza joint; you’ll miss out on the divey bars, the dress sellers"), and I agree, but people need affordable housing first. Charming neighborhood businesses are awesome and I hope there's a way to preserve them, but if only the rich can afford to live near those businesses, it's just another kind of elitism.

njarboe 9y ago
I think this could be possible in the glass boxes if they had many small spaces of retail on the ground floor or two and sold them to business owners (like condos). I wish they would do that in Oakland. I like increased density and we need the housing, but it is a bit sad to see 20 individual lots get eaten up by huge condo projects. Even sadder to see the new construction go up in smoke though.
gizmo686 9y ago
>Those glass boxes won’t have a Dan’s Belltown Grocery, a little pizza joint; you’ll miss out on the divey bars, the dress sellers" Why shouldn't they? There is no reason you can't give the ground floor to bussinesses, and have living units upstairs.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I don't know the market forces involved, but I would expect fancy high-rises to have mostly major chains in their retail slots, not local businesses.