Jon Scholes, head of the Downtown Seattle Association, had a lot to say about the present and future of downtown when he came on Seattle Nice late last week—most of it surprisingly positive.
Yes, the DSA is still focused on filling up vacant office space with people who may prefer working from home, a goal that seems at odds with the group’s stated commitment to reducing climate change. (The most recent Commute Seattle survey found that drive-alone commutes into downtown grew at twice the rate of trips by transit.) According to the State of Downtown economic report, 32 percent of the office vacancies in the central business district remains vacant six years after the start of the pandemic, suggesting a long-term trend.
And yes, Scholes had plenty to say about how taxes are supposedly driving companies out of Seattle and into Bellevue, where employment has grown 12 percent.
But there were parts of our conversation that may surprise some listeners—starting with Scholes’ apparent optimism that at least some existing office buildings could still be converted into housing . “I think there’s great public good to be gained from more of us living more closely together,” Scholes said.”And if we care about climate change and protecting the environment and driving down carbon emission, we need to live more closely together, and we need to live close to transit, and we need to live where we’re maximizing the investment we’ve already made in utilities and sidewalks and parks.”
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Scholes isn’t wide-eyed about the potential for new housing downtown, however. In fact, I was amused to hear the skepticism in Scholes’ voice when we talked about former county executive Dow Constantine’s big plan to create a whole new office and residential district centered around Sound Transit’s future light rail station two blocks west of the King County Courthouse. (Current County Executive Girmay Zahilay briefly mentioned the plan in his remarks at the DSA’s State of Downtown event last week).
“The reality,” Scholes said, is that despite decades of robust development downtown, “we somehow still have a hole in the ground” across the street from City Hall and the county courthouse. “But I commend the executive for continuing to advance it and to figure out what is possible, what can be phased, what might be more incremental. It’s the right thing to do.”
We were wrapping things up when Scholes told us we were being too polite, and asked if we were going to talk about the city’s police surveillance cameras—an issue Mayor Katie Wilson has hedged on after expressing strong opposition during her campaign. Unless Wilson reverses course, the city will install many more cameras in the downtown stadium district for the World Cup games in June.
Maybe calling them “stacked flats,” rather than “apartments,” was a stroke of genius.
On Tuesday, the City Council adopted legislation that will allow eight-unit apartment buildings on every residential lot in the city—or up to ten units if the developer preserves trees or adds “green“ landscaping features, like bioswales and green roofs, to new housing construction. These apartments are known as “stacked flats” because they’re on top of each other, unlike multi-level townhouses that are generally offered for sale, not for rent, at prices far out of reach to most Seattle residents.
The legislation, part of the comprehensive plan package the city council adopted this week, doesn’t spell out eight units, but if you do the math, that’s what it works out to on a 5,000-square-foot lot with a standard 60 percent lot coverage.
Developers who go for the green bonuses will also get to build up to four stories, rather than the standard three. (Logically, four stories makes more sense for eight-unit buildings, allowing two per floor, but maybe some enterprising new councilmember will suggest revisiting that limit). That’s more density than the state required cities to allow under 2023’s HB 1110, which allows four units on all residential lots statewide, or six if two of the units are affordable. The council adopted interim rules to comply with HB 1110 earlier this year.
The changes were part of the council’s final vote of 2025 on the city’s comprehensive plan, the long-debated, much-delayed document that governs how and where Seattle can grow. The council’s comprehensive plan committee already adopted most of the changes that were finalized this week back in September, but had to put off a final vote while the city’s planning department completed environmental review on some new amendments and gave the public an opportunity to comment on the changes
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s comprehensive plan proposal came in a year behind schedule, a delay that has pushed some comprehensive plan legislation to next year, including legislation to enact new zoning in low-rise areas, establish new boundaries for dense “regional centers” and urban centers, and potentially add more “neighborhood centers” near transit stops where taller apartment buildings will be allowed.
Density opponents on the council will have another opportunity to argue that Seattle isn’t ready for more housing, and that the city hasn’t done sufficient outreach to “neighborhoods,” meaning single-family homeowners, before allowing renters to live in new parts of the city. But, thanks mostly to Harrell’s delays, they’ll be joined by two new council members who are fans of density, Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster, and a mayor who’s an unabashed urbanist.
A geographic breakdown of primary election results shows that Mayor Bruce Harrell lost badly in the primary on his own home turf—Southeast Seattle’s 37th District, where he won just 36 percent of the vote to challenger Katie Wilson’s 56 percent. Harrell also failed to win a majority in any Seattle district.
The city is getting ready to overhaul a program that provides tax breaks to developers who agree to keep 25 percent of their apartments affordable for 12 years, known as the Multifamily Tax Exemption program (MFTE). It’s the city’s main program for providing housing affordable to moderate-income people, but in recent years, developers have become less likely to participate in the voluntary program.
Two of the top-level staff hired by new Police Chief Shon Barnes, Deputy Chief Andre Sayles and Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, received lateral hiring bonuses that were created to hire more trained police officers, not as incentives for command staff. SPD told us the two top executives were “eligible” for the bonuses.
The anti-LGBTQ organizers of the August 30 “Revive in ’25” event planned for Cal Anderson Park, in the heart of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood, agreed to move the event to Gas Works Park after negotiations with city officials, including the mayor and City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth. The voluntary relocation came after the city determined that they didn’t have legal authority to deny the permit or force the group to move.
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After reporting on the hiring bonuses SPD provided to a new deputy chief and assistant chief, PubliCola confirmed that Police Chief Shon Barnes also received the $50,000 bonus created to increase the number of deployable police officers. SPD said Barnes’ bonus was allowed under the legislation that created and the bonus.
Claudia Balducci, a King County Council member who’s running for county executive, announced plans to introduce a measure that would dedicate a portion of a recently approved countywide 0.1-cent sales tax increase to create a permanent retail crimes task force. Balducci, who came in second in the primary behind her council colleague Girmay Zahilay, said prosecuting retail theft would help prevent store closures like that of a Fred Meyer in Kent.
Friday’s Afternoon Fizz included stories about the departure of Seattle Chamber of Commerce CEO Rachel Smith; conflicting explanations for Chief Barnes’ $50,000 bonus; progressive victories in Burien, a city that recently passed a complete ban on sleeping in public aimed at barring homeless people from the city; and details from the permit for the relocated “Revive in ‘25” event at Gas Works Park.
Maritza Rivera’s amendments would shrink neighborhood centers—areas where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly legal—across her northeast Seattle district.
The comprehensive plan sets rules for how Seattle develops in the future, including where the city will allow its renter majority to live.
By Erica C. Barnett
After nearly a year of delays, the city council is finally getting ready to put its stamp on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 10-year Comprehensive Plan—a document Harrell has branded with his campaign slogan as the “One Seattle Plan.” The council has been meeting for months to discuss elements of the plan, including the creation of a few dozen new “neighborhood centers” where apartments will be allowed for the first time in decades, but this week was the council’s first opportunity to propose tweaks to the plan—107 amendments in all.
The comprehensive plan sets policies for growth and development, designating where new housing, transportation, and other infrastructure should go and placing limits on housing density in the city’s neighborhoods. It’s updated every 10 years, with periodic amendments, and inevitably reflects the political priorities of whoever is in office at the time.
We’ve reported previously on the Harrell Administration’s reluctance to allow significantly more housing in Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods as part of the plan.
After killing an early draft of the plan that would have allowed significantly more density, Harrell released a plan last year that fell far short of the changes necessary to create enough housing for new and current residents—including renters—to live in Seattle affordably. After intense criticism of that proposal—the city’s Planning Commission said it upheld exclusionary policies rooted in redlining and failed to provide the housing Seattle needs—the mayor came back with a new plan that allowed slightly more housing, though still less than the proposal most members of the current city council said they supported when they ran for election in 2023.
The council’s proposed amendments are a mixed bag. Several proposals would collectively shrink the size of the proposed “neighborhood centers”—areas within 800 feet of certain frequent transit stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be allowed—by hundreds of acres, in a blatant retreat to old single-family zoning patterns that benefit people who already own property and don’t want renters living in “their” neighborhoods.
Others would impose new restrictions on any new development that requires removing trees, including one that would give the city free rein to force builders to redo projects if even one tree, of any size, was threatened.
Still others would provide new incentives for developers to build dense housing, serving as a counterpoint to other councilmembers’ proposals to shrink the areas of the city where people who can’t afford to buy a house in Seattle are allowed to live.
Breaking the substantive amendments down into broad categories, we have:
Expanded Neighborhood Centers
On balance, the proposed amendments that make it easier to build housing—including everything from density bonuses for affordability to expanded and brand-new neighborhood centers—outweigh NIMBY proposals to restrict housing, although some of the proposals are probably nonstarters—or negotiation starters—in their current forms.
Harrell’s final comprehensive plan proposal included 3o neighborhood centers—down from 48 in an early draft, but more than the 24 included in an early version of the plan. Since then, though, there’s been intense pressure on the council to further reduce the number of neighborhood centers in the plan, coming primarily from incumbent homeowners in neighborhoods like Wedgwood, Madrona, and Maple Leaf.
Although several council members did end up proposing amendments that would scale down the size of neighborhood centers, in some cases dramatically, the amendments to add new areas of potential density outweigh those proposals, meaning that if every proposed change to the neighborhood centers was adopted, the amount of land in designated neighborhood centers would increase significantly.
Council members who proposed new or expanded neighborhood centers included Dan Strauss (who proposed a new East Ballard neighborhood center and called for expanding the boundaries of five others, including in Magnolia), Bob Kettle (who proposed a new North Queen Anne/Nickerson Neighborhood Center) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who’s proposing eight new neighborhood centers, one in each council district.
“Seattle needs more housing,” Rinck said. “Seattle also needs full and thriving communities, and we’ve heard an overwhelming call from constituents to achieve these goals with more housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods which haven’t seen proportional growth.”
Build This, Not That
Other proposed amendments would add density bonuses and incentives for different types of housing, such as stacked flats and affordable apartments.
Kettle, for instance, proposed getting rid of an “amenity area” requirement for new housing in neighborhood residential zones, freeing up more land for housing.
Under the current proposal, 20 percent of the space around new apartment buildings in the city’s traditional single-family areas would be reserved for open space, typically a yard, for residents to “recreate on site”—as if what apartment dwellers in cities really want is a tiny lawn where they can all hang out together.
An amendment from Sara Nelson would retain a requirement that residential buildings, including new apartments in all parts of the city, be exempt from environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA); that exemption is otherwise set to expire next month, making housing harder to build.
Other amendments, from Hollingsworth, Nelson, Kettle, and Rinck, would provide bonus density for developers who agree to build specific types of housing, including social housing, accessory dwelling units, and low-income or affordable housing. Several proposals would create incentives for developers to build stacked flats—apartments spread out across a single story of a building—including density bonuses for retaining trees and amendments that would allow stacked flats to be denser than other types of apartments in neighborhood residential (former single-family) zones.
Rob Saka also has an amendment that would give a density bonus for one- or two-story “cottage” apartments surrounding a large common area, a style that resembles single-family housing more than the three-to-six-story apartments that will be allowed in the new neighborhood residential zones under the current plan.
Strauss proposed an amendment that would increase the maximum height in these areas from six to seven or eight stories immediately next to a major transit stop, and Rinck proposed changing the definition of “major transit stop” to include high-frequency buses.
15-Minute City
Several amendments would reduce or remove mandatory parking requirements. The most ambitious, from Rinck, would “remove parking requirements citywide for all land uses in all zones,” a phrase that brings joy to my car-hating little heart. (Yes, I own a car. No, I don’t think the city should socially engineer car culture, as it currently does.)
Builders wouldn’t be barred from including parking in their developments, but they wouldn’t be forced to do so, as they are in many places under the city’s current code.
Another amendment from Rinck, essentially a backup if her first parking proposal fails would reduce parking mandates to comply with a statewide parking reform bill that requires cities to eliminate some of their parking mandates by 2028. Another proposal, from Strauss, would establish parking maximums in the city’s regional centers—the densest areas, including downtown, Capitol Hill, and Strauss’ home turf of Ballard. In a concession to the tree-preservation lobby, Rinck’s amendments also include one that would eliminate parking mandates for developments that preserve trees.
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A proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods could also see some meaningful changes.
In the past, we’ve dunked on Harrell’s proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods, because it would only allow new stores and restaurants on literal corner lots, with restrictions that don’t apply to other businesses in the city, such as a mandatory 10pm closing time. Several amendments attempt to remedy those issues. The amendments range from extremely modest (a Nelson amendment that would remove the literal-corner requirement but retain restrictions on business type, size, and closing hours) to ambitious, by Seattle standards (a Rinck proposal that would remove the corner requirement, allow businesses to be open past 10pm, and add bars to the list of businesses that are legal in neighborhoods.
Three amendments, from Rinck, Strauss, and Nelson, would make it easier to open stores and restaurants in residential neighborhoods where they’re currently banned. As we’ve reported, Harrell’s comp plan proposal would allow corner stores in neighborhoods, but only on literal corners, with additional restrictions such as mandatory 10pm closures and a stipulation that they can include restaurants, but not bars.
The amendments range from modest (amendments from Strauss and Nelson to allow stores throughout residential zones, not just on corners) to ambitious (a Rinck proposal that would allow restaurants and bars throughout these areas, eliminate a requirement that businesses be closed from 10pm to 6am, and ditch a 2,500-square-foot size restriction included in the mayor’s proposal). Allowing bars in neighborhoods, a policy that works fine in big cities across the country, may be a bridge too far for censorious Seattle, but a compromise between these proposals could be a first step toward creating more 15-minute neighborhoods in Seattle.
Homeowners vs. Renters
Of course, it wouldn’t be a zoning update without some NIMBY poison pills. Although no one, including newly appointed District 5 Councilmember Debora Juarez, has proposed reviving former D5 councilmember Cathy Moore’s quixotic effort to remove an entire neighborhood center from Maple Leaf, several councilmembers have proposed reducing the amount of land in their districts where people who rent apartments can live.
Maritza Rivera, who has frequently claimed that the city did insufficient outreach to single-family neighborhoods before allowing apartments near frequent transit stops, has three amendments to shrink neighborhood centers in Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood. Her proposal to scale back the Wedgwood center is the most radical of the three, in that it would reduce the size of the center by about 40 percent, limiting apartments to 35th Ave. NE, already a busy arterial, and prohibiting them in the adjacent blocks. (In contrast, one of Rinck’s amendments would expand the Wedgwood neighborhood center to the south; expect strong objections from Rivera to that one).
“Based on months of feedback from community members who live in and near the proposed neighborhood centers, my amendments modify the boundaries of the neighborhood centers in the D4, including Wedgwood, Bryant and Ravenna, to reflect resident concerns…. around the ability of local neighborhood streets to handle increased growth and the infrastructure,” Rivera said.
A Rivera amendment for Ravenna traces a similar line to carve single-family houses in a designated historic district (itself a way for older neighborhoods to oppose density) out of the proposed neighborhood center around Third Place Books, leaving the commercial area but ensuring that there would be no apartments in the neighborhood surrounding the commercial center.
Separately, Rivera proposed an amendment that would give the city the HOA-like authority to dictate what kind of external siding would be allowed on buildings within designated national or local historic districts, based on factors like the “historic character” of an area; this extraordinary new power would also apply to historic districts that might be designated in the future, including those proposed by house owners who oppose new development in their neighborhoods.
Joy Hollingsworth wants to cut the Madrona Neighborhood Center by about seven blocks, concentrating new housing into a smaller area that already includes parks, schools, and other areas where housing can’t be built.
Joy Hollingsworth has proposed shrinking down another controversial neighborhood center in Madrona, whose homeowning residents showed up en masse to oppose the zoning change in their neighborhood. Hollingsworth’s amendment would shrink the Madrona center by nearly 40 percent, slicing off big chunks of current single-family areas on the east and west sides of the proposed center and concentrating any new housing around an existing commercial stretch that includes an elementary school, library, and playfield where housing can’t be built.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a conversation about housing in 2025 without hand-wringing over trees—not planting or maintaining trees in public spaces, which are actions the city could take at any time, or encouraging property owners to plant new trees themselves, but preserving trees that already exist, generally at the expense of new development.
In addition to the tree preservation incentives I mentioned earlier, there’s an amendment from Strauss to “recognize the importance of the natural environment and native species, including trees, bees, salmon, orca, and herons,” plus several from Rivera to make it harder to develop housing if trees are on site.
The most extreme proposal from Rivera—and the one that made Rinck confirm with council staff that the amendment really would do what it appeared to do—would allow the city to require developers to come up with a completely new alternative plan if it turned out their housing proposal would require the removal of any tree, no matter its size, age, or viability.
It’s easy to see how this could grind development in traditional single-family areas to a halt. If someone planted a sapling on a property slated for development, or if there was already unremarkable small tree on site, the city could stop the project and require the developer to start from scratch.
Housing is already tremendously expensive to build in Seattle, and construction permits are declining as developers pull out of the city. Empowering unelected city staffers to force full project redesigns around every existing tree would exacerbate the housing crisis, adding costs to projects that are already financed while reducing the amount of housing that could be built in every project with a tree on site. And forget about expanding the city’s tree canopy—who would plant a new tree on a property they may want to sell in the future, knowing it would instantly reduce their property value?
A crew member removes limbs from the tree late Monday morning.
By Erica C. Barnett
Between 20 and 25 protesters blocked a tree service company that was trying to reach a construction site in the Ravenna neighborhood on Monday morning, where residents and activists from outside the area have been protesting the removal of a western red cedar since earlier this month. About 10 police officers came out later to remove protesters from the development site, arresting at least one who refused to leave. PhotogSteve81, on Instagram, captured the chaotic scene.
The tree stood on the corner of a lot where a builder, Ashworth Homes, plans to replace a single-family house with four new townhomes—and where Barbara Brooks, the former owner, lived for more than 70 years until she died three years ago at the age of 101.
Although Tree Action Seattle claimed, on its action page for “Grandma Brooks’ Cedar” (later changed to “Grandma’s Cedar”) that Brooks “cherished” and lovingly cared for the tree, Brooks’ daughters said the opposite was true—in fact, they said, their mother “hated” the tree because it shed constantly and was so work to maintain.
The sisters, Barbara and Beverly, said no one in the neighborhood offered to pitch in as their mother, and later Beverly, struggled to keep the roof, sidewalk, and gutters clear of debris from the tree. “My mom would cut back the branches and clean it up just constantly,” Barbara recalled. “We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. Mom always said, ‘If I could afford to get rid of this tree, I would.'”
Although Tree Action and others have suggested that the property developer promised the Brooks family they would keep the tree, both the developer and the builder who bought the property say that wasn’t true. Roque de Herrera, a representative for property developer Legacy Group Capital, said “there were no conversations, promises made, or agreements regarding the tree” when Legacy signed on as the site developer. Erich Armbruster, the president of Ashworth Homes, said no one brought up the tree at any point during the sale.
By 11:00 on Monday morning, the truck the protesters blocked earlier had made its way onto the property, and a crew member was busy limbing the tree from a bucket two stories above the ground. Despite the wind and rain, a handful of people watched from across the street as a pile of branches accumulated on the ground and a swirl of sawdust spun through the air.
One, Lynnwood horticulturist Gabriel Kearns, walked across the street periodically to film the workers and yell at them for removing the tree. She said her biggest issue was that developers were killing healthy trees to build “million-dollar crap” and creating “mini-deserts,” with dead soil and no shade, in the city. Gesturing at an apartment building next to the property, she said, “Those apartments are going to be 100 degrees this summer—they will not have shade. … Trees provide a livable community.”
Kearns said she wanted to see Seattle tighten its tree code to make it more difficult to remove trees, perhaps by imposing a waiting period between when developers remove a tree and when they can begin development.
Another person didn’t want to be quoted but told me they heard I was being paid by developers.
Michelle Tanco, who lives nearby and spent part of the previous night at the protest, told me she has no problem with new housing—”we really need new houses”—but was sad to see the tree cut down. “I spend a lot of time walking up and down with my kids, learning the names of the local trees, and this was the first one one my kids learned—western red cedar,” she said.
Standing with her was Kim Butler, who lives about a mile away. She said that when she heard the tree was going to be removed, she reached out to Armbruster to see if he would agree to keep the tree if advocates could come up with a different site plan that would keep it in place without reducing the value of the final development. As PubliCola reported yesterday, the site plan proposed by Tree Action would have substantially reduced the size of one unit and eliminated two garage parking spaces, lowering the value of the site plan to less than Armbruster paid for it.
“He said he was willing to work with me… to consider keeping the tree, but he couldn’t have it interfering with his development timeline and he couldn’t have any additional expense, so it had to be net neutral,” Butler said. “We were getting there, but it wasn’t ever going to be fast enough—it just wasn’t going to happen.”
Armbruster, who was standing on the site across the street from Butler on Monday, said that even though Butler and other advocates weren’t able to come up with a workable alternative site plan on extremely short notice, he found Butler “a little different” than most of the people who have protested his project, because “she asked a question—’What would it take? Help me understand this from your perspective.'”
Butler said that even though her efforts didn’t save the tree, her conversations with Armbruster gave her hope that the new development, which will include six new on-site trees and one new street tree, will be better. “That’s what I’m doing to honor this tree,” she said. “This line of communication that opened up is integral to having a better process in the future.”
Tanco said one thing she learned during the protests is that the most effective way to ensure trees don’t get cut down is for the property owner to place a protective covenant on the property. (Covenants are a tough sell because they generally lower a property’s resale value.) “This brought a lot of neighbors together,” Tanco said. “It’s good to know more community members, so we can come together and look at other trees in the neighborhood, and reach out to the people who own them to see what they want to do and help them with that process.”
UPDATE: On Monday morning, police intervened as protesters attempted to block construction at the site. According to the Instagram account PhotogSteve81, posting at about 10:15 Monday morning, “arrests are being made” at the site. Video posted by the account showed protesters skirmishing with police officers and a man and woman lying on the ground, surrounded by police.
Erich Armbruster, of Ashworth Homes, told PubliCola that protesters showed up at the site last night and occupied an area behind a fence set up by the Seattle Department of Transportation; at some point, one broke onto the property itself and refused to leave until police arrived last night. This morning, protesters returned and re-occupied the site as well as the street in front of the property, with at least one person lying down in the street and refusing to leave, while others stood inside the fencing itself. Police came out and attempted to deescalate, eventually arresting at least one protester.
Look back for more updates later today.
Original story follows:
On February 9, several dozen people gathered outside a construction site in northeast Seattle to rally around a large Western red cedar tree, which is slated for removal as part of a new development that will replace a one-story bungalow with four new townhouses. The city had recently posted a notice that the tree could come down as February 10, so neighbors who wanted to save the tree scrambled to respond.
“We were shocked because it was too close [in time],” said Saraswati Sunindyo, who lives down the street. “We didn’t have enough time to do much of anything.”
Tree Action Seattle, a group that has pushed for revisions to Seattle’s tree ordinance that would make it harder to remove trees for development, quickly got to work, organizing the rally and creating an action page for the tree, which is located just off busy NE 65th Street, between two apartment buildings and across the street from a drive-through coffee stand.
Formerly one of several anonymous large trees on the block, the cedar now had a name—Grandma Brooks’ Cedar—and a backstory: According to Tree Action Seattle, the previous homeowner, Barbara Brooks, “lovingly cared for” and “cherished” the tree for for more than 70 years. “On hot summer days, she would carry a bucket of water to the tree to water it,” according to the website, and even swept the driveway of the neighboring apartment complex until she was almost 90.
When the apartment complex owner offered to buy her house, the site continues, Brooks refused, because he said his plans would require cutting down the tree. “Barbara passed away at 103, and requested her family only sell the property to a buyer that would preserve the tree.”
According to Tree Action, Legacy Capital Partners, the real estate firm brokered the deal, “offered to save the tree,” but “immediately filed plans to remove the cedar” once the land was in their hands. A representative from Legacy did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the owner of the apartment building did not return a call last week.
According to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections spokesman Bryan Stevens, developers are allowed to remove “Tier 2” trees—those with a diameter of 24 inches or more—if retaining the tree would reduce the amount of developable land on a lot to less than 85 percent of its total area. Anyone who removes a tree for development must replace the tree with a tree or trees that will result in a similar or greater tree canopy once they mature.
Those trees, however, will take a long time to grow to full height—longer than many of the people mourning the loss of the cedar will be alive.
“The whole neighborhood really loves the tree,” Sunindyo said. There are other Western red cedars in the area, she acknowledged, but “they’re not as big as that one. My kids grew up with that tree. A neighbor who is 70 years old said, ‘When I was little, it was already big.’ So everyone is attached to that tree.”
Not everyone.
“Mom hated that tree,” said Beverly Brooks, who grew up in the house and lived with her mother for the last seven years of her life. “My mother never took buckets of water to water the tree. She was 101, not 103, [when she died], and she never told any neighbor that she loved that tree. We all hated that tree.”
As for protesters’ claims that their family told Legacy they had to keep the tree in place, Beverly said, “We never said anything to anybody about that tree.”
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“Our mother hated that tree,” Beverly’s sister Barbara confirmed. “It’s a huge tree, and it sheds all the time.” Her mother maintained the tree to the best of her ability, removing piles of needles from the roof, gutters, and sidewalk, but she certainly didn’t “cherish” or “lovingly care for” it, the sisters said.
“My mom would cut back the branches and clean it up just constantly,” Barbara said. “We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. Mom always said, ‘If I could afford to get rid of this tree, I would.'”
“That tree was a burden to my mom for years and years,” Beverly said. Eventually, it became her burden as well. For 30 years, into her 70s, Beverly climbed up on the roof to remove needles from the house and gutters, then cleared the sidewalk. “I didn’t want anybody to fall and get hurt,” she said. In all that time, “Not one of the neighbors asked if they could help or nothing. They saw me up on the roof and every man turned the other way.”
“They call my mom ‘Grandma Brooks.’ I don’t like that,” Beverly added. “Her name was Mrs. Brooks. She wasn’t a grandma to any of them.”
Both sisters recall that a neighbor across the street told their mother she needed to put a covenant on the property so that any future buyer would have to keep the tree, but their mother said no. They were surprised at the vitriol the new owner, Legacy, has received for their plans to remove the tree. “In our minds, we just thought ‘let’s get rid of it’ because it’s going to cause the next people problems,” Barbara said.
Today, the Brooks’ house is gone, reduced to a pile of rubble. After the city received an anonymous complaint about potential groundwater pollution from asbestos, the new owner, Ashworth Homes, stopped demolition to do a second asbestos remediation on what’s left of the house, stopping work on the project.
Remnants from the recent protest, including a circle of rose petals surrounded by a wreath of cedar boughs, remained visible on the ground as of last week. The tree, which towers over the three-story apartment complex next door, is now surrounded by protective fencing that neighbors have festooned with signs reading “SAVE THIS TREE!!!” and “MAKE AMERICA AN ENDLESS EXPANSE OF OLD-GROWTH FOREST WITH NO CERTAIN BORDERS AGAIN.”
There is no old-growth forest remaining in Seattle neighborhoods, although isolated old-growth trees can be found in a few local parks. Western red cedars like the one in the Brooks’ former yard take about 50 years to reach their mature height of 80 feet or more, and were part of the landscaping planted to replace the old-growth forest that was destroyed to develop single-family neighborhoods across what is now Seattle.
Tree Action Seattle argues that it would be a simple thing to keep the tree in place and redesign the site plan, by shifting around the buildings and converting two of the four proposed garage spaces into surface parking spots. “I showed the plan to two architects,” Tree Action’s Sandy Shettler said over email. “One of them laughed and said there are so many ways to design the site with the same amount of housing around this tree you’d have to go out of your way to remove it.”
Ashworth Homes president Erich Armbruster agrees it might be technically possible to keep the tree–but not on the site plan he purchased the plans for the property based on a layout that has more value because of the size and floor plans of the homes that can be built there, including garages and more usable ground-floor space than Tree Action’s proposed site plan would allow.
“Had I been presented that plan, presuming it was possible, might I have purchased it? Yes, I might have, but not for the price I paid,” Armbruster said. Tree Action’s plan, he said, lowers the value of the finished development by replacing garages with less desirable surface parking and changing the layout of the building next to the tree to make the first floor “harder to lay out for any sort of meaningful use.”
Property records show the Brooks sold the property to Ashworth for a little more than $1 million.
“A bank would have required it to be less because the finished value isn’t as high,” Armbruster said. “I purchased a permitted site plan that was all negotiated according to the rules in place today.” Renegotiating the plan now would be like buying a car, driving it off the lot, and getting a call from the dealer asking you to pay more for the tires. “We can’t renegotiate it, because I’ve already purchased it.”
A rendering of the approved townhouses on the site of the Brooks’ former property.
Armbruster said that after tree activists began protesting the removal of the cedar, the tree service provider he hired to remove the tree backed out and he had to hire a new one—an event that’s reflected in city records. Once they’ve completed asbestos remediation and received a permit to remove the tree, work can move forward again, Armbruster said.
There is one way for homeowners to prevent future developers to remove a tree on their property: Before selling a property or passing it on to heirs, an owner can place a covenant on the land to protect the tree. Although both sisters recalled a neighbor telling her mother repeatedly to protect the tree with this kind of covenant, she didn’t. “He would tell my mom, ‘When you sell this house, put it in writing that this tree has to stay,’ and she said, ‘No, don’t tell me what to do,” Beverly recalled.
The sisters say the pressure from neighbors has made them feel uncomfortable returning to their old neighborhood. But Barbara did stop briefly by the recent protest. “I went to their little event,” she recalled, “and said ‘Don’t homeowners, after they pay taxes for 75 years, have the right to sell the place?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Barbara said, “It’s just like killing my mom over and over. … It’s been three years. Can’t that poor woman just be left alone?”
