Groundbreaking Ceremony for Cascade Senior Housing

Cascade Senior Housing, 50 units of green and affordable senior housing units in South Lake Union's Cascade neighborhood, will be having a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday July 17, 10:00am at Minor and Republican.

Come celebrate with Seattle Councilmember Jan Drago, Doris Koo of Enterprise, Adrienne Quinn of Seattle’s Office of Housing, Renee Greenman of HUD and others! Cascade Senior Housing will feature 50 units for seniors in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood.

Cascade Senior Housing is funded through an innovative approach of combining HUD 202 senior housing funds with 9% tax credits. The building will be built to green standards and will feature a green roof. The rooftop will provide open space, a p-patch for residents, and a spot to enjoy the breathtaking views of South Lake Union. LIHI is delighted to provide affordable senior housing in one of the most attractive, livable, and walk-able neighborhoods in Seattle.

Cascade Senior Housing

Developer: Enterprise Communities
Architect: Runberg Architecture Group
Contractor: Synergy Construction

Cascade Senior Housing will feature 50 units for seniors in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood...
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Information provided by the South Lake Union Wiki

Architecture and Economics

Seattle PI on South Lake Union architecture:

Enough of this neighborhood has now unfolded that some assessments are possible, and frankly, it's disappointing. Check out the new Westlake/Terry Building (Group Health's headquarters) at 320 Westlake Ave. North, and the soon-to-be-completed Veer Lofts, Rollin Street and Enso condos, which you can ponder as models in the Discovery Center. All are in Allen's Vulcan Real Estate portfolio and all are perfectly respectable but bland, conservative, and infected with a tedious sameness. There are excellent urbanist ideas and delightful details here and there, but, overall, the neighborhood is shaping up to be an architectural bore.

Its most interesting buildings, apart from the Discovery Center, are all non-Vulcan projects: the REI flagship, a scattering of small historic properties, and the new ultra-green Terry Thomas office building.

What's happening here?

Basic economics.

Spec commercial buildings and mass-market housing seldom hang out on the cutting edge because it's too risky. Still, you'd like to think that the guy who commissioned Frank Gehry to plunk a clump of psychedelic steel mushrooms into Seattle Center would embark on South Lake Union -- a much more important project to Seattle -- with a pep talk to the effect of, "Let's try a bunch of cool stuff like EMP -- just better."

Meanwhile, in West Lake Union, the Seattle Times reports on Unico's modular housing project:

Developer Unico Properties' answer to affordable housing sits unobtrusively in a quiet plaza in increasingly unaffordable downtown Seattle.

The prototypes have been on display since last fall: two boxy, modular, prefabricated apartment units. Unico says they can be built for less than conventional, "stick-built" apartments and stacked all kinds of ways, like children's building blocks.

"Coming soon to Seattle and Portland urban neighborhoods," a sign at the display promises.

Soon means now.

Unico has filed preliminary paperwork with the city to build the first for-real apartment complex with its factory-built "Inhabit" units on a hilly site on Dexter Avenue North, above Lake Union.

Plans show 62 units, configured in stacks of three and four, atop a concrete base that would contain parking and six "live-work" spaces.

A city design review board got its first look at the plans last month. It called the proposal "promising."

Unico won't discuss details of the Dexter Avenue North project, also named Inhabit. The permitting process has just begun, and the company's purchase of the property hasn't closed.

But President and CEO Dale Sperling is more than willing to talk about the Inhabit idea and its potential to provide stylish, green, in-city homes for 20-somethings whose incomes fall well short of six figures.

Kinects

1200 Stewart's 400' twin-towers are getting a neighbor: a 40-story, 340 unit apartment tower dubbed Kinects slated for Minor Ave between Stewart and Howell streets.

Plans call for about 6,000 square feet of ground-floor restaurant and retail space, a rooftop lap pool, deck and lounge, and a total of 325 aboveground and underground parking stalls. Some units would be earmarked for low- and moderate-income renters.

Seattle DPD has approved the project, and the developer, Securities Properties – the same ones behind Fremont's Epi and Ballard on the Park (under construction) – say they've obtained financing for the project and will break ground either late this year or early next year.

Seen in the Seattle Times.

1200 Stewart

This little ditty (read huge 400' twin tower covering a full block) is planned for Denny and Stewart. SLOG has been following this all along through the three early design reviews that the developer says have cost him a million dollars.

The building of three or so floors of commercial, a hotel, and luxury condos is ambitious, but is not without its problems.

For one, the project will have underground parking for 800 vehicles, and for two, there will be no retail to speak of on Denny.

This doesn't seem to jive entirely with comments made earlier by architect Paul Thoryk about the developer at Lexas Companies, saying, “He is very sensitive to the environment, esthetics, and wants a very well-done building and to please the community. We want to make it a neighborhood-friendly environment.”

The city design review board passed it through unanimously.

Know your SLU Detours/Closures/Parking/Transportation/Development

SLUFAN came up with a new widget on their website that's pretty cool - it's called the South Lake Union Construction Activities Map. It plots all the new development and associated detours on a map and let's you click for more detail. As an added bonus, public transportation routes and parking lots (future development sites) are also on the map.

This complements Discover SLU's Amenities map quite nicely, and as if that weren't enough—there's a SLU Green map that we've mentioned before. Looks like someone's getting some mileage on this mapping app.

What's a Woonerf?

I've been thinking South Lake Union has been missing something, but until now I couldn't quite point a finger to it. What's that you ask? Why, woonerven of course.

Blume Co. had a design review last night on its 780,000 sq. ft. biotech campus planned for Mercer & Yale. By far the most interesting part of the project is Blume and architect NBBJ's incorporation of a woonerf. What exactly is a woonerf? Here's the explanation from Blume's website:

The rough translation of woonerf is “street for living." Woonerven, the plural of woonerf, are more like piazzas than parkways. Children can play in the middle of a woonerf because they and other pedestrians have priority over automobiles. Cars are still allowed. But they must travel at walking speed as they navigate around trees, planters, bollards and other obstacles.

Woonerven not only are pleasant places to gather, they also encourage and reward sustainable commuting choices, such as bicycling and walking.

The woonerf would be Seattle's first. What strikes me from the renderings below is the similarity to Alley 24, also on Yale Ave (Alley 24 was also designed by NBBJ and serves as its headquarters).

Blume's woonerf might just be a continuation of what the REI parking garage bottleneck and Vivace foot-traffic have created out front of Alley 24. The one thing Alley 24 has going for it that Blume's campus will not, however, is the 172 apartment units on-site. The campus (map for Yale Campus South and Yale Campus North) is also much closer to the freeway by the Mercer on-ramp, which draws less pedestrian activity than the area surrounding Cascade Park.

In any case, it's great to see a developer integrate pedestrian-friendly ideas into their projects. If it's executed properly with good retail uses I'm sure the woonerf will be a hit.

Here's what Blume's Tara Raymond had to say about the project's status:

“We don’t have any signed leases and we are still in the planning stages,” says Blume’s Tara Raymond. “If we had a medical or biotech company come along that would be fine, or if one of Amazon’s partners came along, we would be thrilled.“ But will such a tenant be looking for spendy new digs in this mopey economy? “Actually, its interesting because the need [for office space] is there, unlike the residential decline,” says Raymond. “I actually think that things are getting better. Knock on wood, of course.”

Thanks SLOG.

South Lake Union Development

Photo: hugeasscity

Take a stroll down Denny Way with danb at hugeasscity. On the tour: Taylor 28, Borealis Apartments, Rollin Street, Enso, West 8th and Mirabella.

If You Build It...

Tonight the city will review developer CarrAmerica's design proposal for a huge biotech campus consisting of three six-story buildings in West Lake Union. See SLOG for more details.

The Blume Co. is progressing with 'The Yale Campus', 776,000 sq. ft. of office, biotech and retail space on Mercer and Eastlake.

And in case you've been living under a rock, Amazon.com is moving its headquarters to South Lake Union. The online retailer has agreed to lease up to 1.6 million sq. ft. in up to 11 buildings to be developed by Vulcan and Schnitzer West. The Seattle City Council changed the land-use code to allow building heights up to 165 ft. or 12 stories in exchange for $6.4M in affordable housing and other benefits. Vulcan will also develop for LEED Silver or Gold certification.