Most of the buildings developed under this code were Seattle Housing Authority towers built under contract by private enterprise. Developers bought the land and designed the building, and then proposed it to SHA. The ones they liked got built and became part of the SHA inventory.

And few people at the time much liked these resulting buildings, and the market for them was such that they became mostly stand-alone structures, so the areas ultimately were “downzoned” to standard height multi-family zones.

To imagine that an endless layer of single and double story buildings has little impact on the visual environment is fallacious. Many’s the time I’ve set out for some distant destination and traveled for seemingly hours, in a Seattle drizzle, through Seattle low-rise, becoming increasingly depressed at the thought that this might just go on forever. A one-story building is an effective viewblock to the person on the sidewalk, and certainly there is no particular novelty to 100 square miles of single family dwellings. This, after all, is why the Viaduct arouses such passionate defense from people who feel they only really see the Olympics during their brief drive on the elevated highway.

The fairly obvious problems with the building in question are that it apparently was placed at random, built with no attempt at embellishment, and apparently garnished with parking to complete the feeling of “concrete wasteland” as you walk by the lot. It would make a lot more sense on a major street with surrounding street level retail, and decoration to make it something you might want to look at. It is a pillar of a forgotten, but not lamented, age.

People who want to preserve single-family housing should be pushing for 50-story towers by transit stations. These towers would suck up market demand like a Hoover. In contrast, three-story development spreads like ivy, encroaching but not actually doing anything worthwhile, as most of it is by small players thinking only in terms of one or two residential lots.

You know the Safeco building is basically at the base of the proposed Brooklyn light rail station? That station was taken off the line in last year’s Prop 1, but it is back on the table for the possible package that ST may send to the ballot this fall. What, you havent commented on ST’s possible packages yet? Then please go visit their website this minute, www.soundtransit.org

Talk about great TOD potential. Yes, the building is an out-of-place eyesore for miles around…but it is what it is. Now let’s look at the surround properties that may redevelop. Let’s get some good design in there to help soften the blocky-ness of the building. Let’s get great public spaces near the station area. Let’s get people.

Oh, yeah, and let’s get transit.

This is a real issue that a lot of people care about. I would love to see beacon hill redevelop, and I believe IF there were appropriate design guidelines that ensured that the towers looked good from a distance, then I would be all for building a dozen towers on top of that hill, but if it was more of these, then I would rather have nothing.

This issue also brings up an important issue that is ignored by proponents of pin-towers, which is that they affect more people than just the neighbors. Low and midrise buildings have virtually no view impact outside the immediate area, so it makes sense to focus only on their highly local view impacts, but towers, thick or thin, can be seen for miles. Thus they affect people over a broader area and that impact needs to be considered. This doesn’t mean, “don’t ever do it”, but it does mean that we can’t just assume that we can apply the same process and the same evaluation criteria to a highrise that we can to a midrise. The scope of the impact is different, so the definition of stakeholder needs to change.

We density advocates should be the number-one cheerleaders of good design, because the surest way to create a anti-density backlash is to build a few new tall, ugly poster children that the NIMBYs can point to from anywhere in the city and say, “that building right there is why we need to limit density.”

The University Plaza and the Safeco building were the first REALLY tall buildings built outside of downtown, and caused such a furor when they were built, that the city passed height-limiting zoning rules just after they were completed.

Ironically, many of over tall buildings were either built as public housing or are public housing now, that Beacon Hill building, the Jefferson Heights building on First Hill, the 10 story building on the top of Capitol Hill (not the ones on Belmont, but the one on fourteenth, the oversized building on seventh near the University Plaza, and the overtall building on 12th and 47th.

I guess was the same thing as yours… that these came before there was very much regulation, and that they were probably the catalyst for the regulations that we do have today. I’d really like to find out more of the story… does anyone know?