Category: Development

Density, Development, Environment, Guest Contributor, legislature

Growth Is Coming. The Legislature Needs to Plan for It.
David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Alex Brennan

When I was growing up here in the 1980s, Seattle was one of the most affordable cities in the country. My parents rented a house for $100 a month, allowing them to save enough for a down payment before I was born. Since then, the city’s unique combination of affordability, natural beauty, and economic dynamism has attracted people from all over the world to our region, further enriching our cultural diversity, civic engagement, and economy.

Unfortunately, housing has not kept up with growth—especially where we need it most. Now Seattle’s housing is some of the most expensive in the world. Many of my childhood friends have been priced out and many beloved newer friends are struggling to stay. These problems extend across the state.

Since the 1950s, popular culture has sold us a vision of prosperity where you get a big house with a big yard and drive everywhere. Suburban property owners, developers, and other powerful interests rigged a land use system that stripped away other options. This growth pattern has damaged critical wildlife habitat and prime farmland, strained infrastructure, isolated households, and priced out whole communities. We were sold a bad bill of goods.

Standing in the way are a handful of small but powerful suburban cities, home to some of the wealthiest people in the world. Many welcoming people live in these places, but the organized voices representing them in Olympia are saying no—no to taking their share of growth, no to affordable housing options, no to people who do not have cars or cannot drive, and no to sharing their parks and schools.

This old model for growth is broken and cannot meet our needs. We need a new model that offers housing for Washingtonians at every income level—especially near jobs, transit, and essential goods and services. That is why this year, a broad, unlikely coalition of business and labor, environmentalists and developers, affordable housing providers and social justice advocates have come together to support new housing options in addition to new ways to design and invest in our communities. Our success moving past the House-of-origin cutoff shows that, after years of advocacy and coalition building, we finally have an opportunity to make this new vision a reality. Right now, legislators have three important bills before them:

• HB 1110 would allow duplexes in most single family neighborhoods across the state, and triplexes, fourplexes, and some sixplexes in larger cities. These more diverse housing types, often termed “missing middle” because they fill in the gap between single-family homes and larger apartment buildings, are essential for providing lower cost options in all our neighborhoods.

• SB 5466 would set minimum densities near light rail stations and other high-capacity transit. We need to let more people live near the transit that can provide access to major job centers and essential goods and services without getting stuck in traffic. This legislation, which  also provides incentives and funding for affordability and requires that cities develop anti-displacement plans for high displacement neighborhoods that are impacted.

• HB 1181 incorporates climate change into the State Growth Management Act, the framework for how our state, cities, and counties plan for growth. Local governments will be directed to implement local policies and investments that will create more compact, walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods that reduce the need to drive.

These three policies are also part of a broader package of housing policies including the Covenant Homeownership Act, which addresses past racial discrimination in mortgage lending and makes record investments in the state housing trust fund. Together, this broader package will move Washington toward a more sustainable and inclusive future.

Standing in the way are a handful of small but powerful suburban cities, home to some of the wealthiest people in the world. Many welcoming people live in these places, but the organized voices representing them in Olympia are saying no—no to taking their share of growth, no to affordable housing options, no to people who do not have cars or cannot drive, and no to sharing their parks and schools.

But we can make a different choice. We can ensure that working class communities from all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds have a place in our state. Our housing options, just like our communities, should be plentiful and diverse with everything you need—fresh groceries, the doctor’s office, your favorite restaurant, parks and libraries—available within easy reach of your home. Whether you want to live in a big city or a small town, we all deserve an affordable home in a neighborhood built for people and communities.

I feel lucky to live in the city where I grew up. I want other long-time residents to be able to stay and thrive in their communities and I want to welcome new people to come here and enjoy what makes Washington such a great state. We have the tools. Now it is our legislators’ turn to fulfill this promise and pass these important bills this session.

Alex Brennan is the Executive Director of Futurewise. Born and raised in Seattle, he now resides in Capitol Hill and works across the state. Futurewise is leading campaigns to pass HB 1181, HB 1110, and SB 5466.

 

Development, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz

New Housing Not A Major Factor In Tree Loss, Police Alternative Pilot Behind Schedule, Deputy Mayor Says Harrell “Not Interested in Reelection”

1. A new report on Seattle’s tree canopy—a measure of how much of the city is shaded by trees—shows that the amount of tree cover in the city declined by half a percentage point (from 28.6 percent tree cover to 28.1 percent) from 2016 to 2021, the equivalent of 255 acres of tree loss.

The largest portion of this loss was not, however, due to development in single-family neighborhoods, as opponents of new residential density frequently imply, but in the city’s own parks, where 45 percent of the total tree loss occurred, largely because not as many trees were replaced in parks relative to other areas, resulting in a higher percentage of tree canopy loss.

Although “neighborhood residential” (traditional single-family) areas accounted for more than a third of the total canopy over the five years covered by the study, less than 7 percent of tree loss (17  acres) resulted from development in those areas, while development in multifamily areas accounted for another 14 acres of trees lost.

The report does not specify what kind of development happened in these areas or whether it involved increases in density (as opposed to land owners building bigger houses), but it does conclude: “most trees in [neighborhood residential areas] were likely lost due to reasons other than development.”

So why did Seattle’s residential areas lose so many trees? According to the report, the reasons “may include disease or hazard risk, storm events, or aging trees at the end of their lifespan. Trees are also removed to accommodate other uses (e.g., solar arrays, views, gardens, etc.).” In other words: In addition to natural losses, homeowners are removing trees on their own property for reasons that have nothing to do with housing.

Tree canopy losses were greater, as a percentage of the overall canopy in 2016 compared to 2021, in areas with more people of color, lower incomes, and less access to opportunity, including the Rainier Valley and South Park. These areas have fewer trees already, and lost ground over the past year despite efforts to plant trees in historically under-forested areas. It’s unclear from the report exactly why this happened, although the report notes construction of light rail at Northgate accounted for a significant portion of the overall loss in these “environmental justice” areas—an example that contrasts an environmentally positive project, light rail, with the trees it displaced.

As for why the city’s parks are losing trees at a faster rate than others areas, the report says the methodology researchers used might not capture undergrowth, and that newly planted trees take a long time to grow and show up in tree canopy assessments. According to a Parks Department spokeswoman, “it’s not that the rate of replacement has been slow, but the growth from those replacement trees is slow as they have more evergreen trees that start from seedlings and take time to show in the canopy. Loss of a tree is an event, it’s sudden and immediately noticed. Growth is a process that occurs over time and regaining canopy can take many years.”

Overall, Seattle has just over 28 percent tree coverage—hundreds of acres shy of the city’s goal of 30 percent tree canopy by 2037.

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2. City council members expressed frustration earlier this week that the mayor’s office is several months behind schedule establishing a small alternative response pilot program for some emergency calls that don’t require a police response. As PubliCola reported last year, the mayor’s office and council signed a “term sheet” laying out steps, and deadlines, for a pilot program that would send civilian responders to some calls, including “person down” calls and wellness checks.

The term sheet included a number of milestones that were supposed to culminate in a pilot program, including a comprehensive set of policy recommendations, a budget, and a final plan that was supposed to launch in January. During a meeting of the council’s public safety committee, a council central staffer said “part of the delay has been the hiring and onboarding” of new Community Safety and Communications Center director Rebecca Gonzales, whom Harrell nominated to lead the city’s 911 dispatch office in January.

But committee chair Lisa Herbold said Gonzales’ appointment should have no impact on the long-planned pilot. “There is absolutely no reason, I believe that we need to delay these conversations about a pilot any longer, regardless of the status of the of the new director coming on,” Herbold said. “We’ve got a lot of good people who’ve been working on this for a while—for several years now— and we need to make sure that we’re driving this forward and creating some momentum where there currently appears to be very little.”

Councilmember Andrew Lewis, the council’s most vocal advocate for an alternative response system, echoed Herbold’s comments. “If we have another hearing like this, where the timelines are so off, and the progress is so on the surface unclear at the next hearing on this topic, I would be supportive of reevaluating the process entirely to find a different path for achieving these goals,” Lewis said. “I just think the sense of urgency around this needs to be much, much higher from all of the parties involved.”

“[Mayor Harrell is] not interested in reelection, which is so exciting, and so he doesn’t make decisions out a fear to get reelected.”—Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, speaking about the city’s work on homelessness at a national conference this week

3. Seattle Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington caused a bit of a stir at the National Alliance for Ending Homelessness’ annual conference in Oakland this week, when she commented on stage that she appreciated working with Mayor Bruce Harrell because “he’s not interested in reelection.” Some in the room interpreted the comment as a statement that Harrell won’t seek reelection after one term, while others said it was more ambiguous.

The context for Washington’s comment was a list of things Seattle is doing right on homelessness; she was talking about why “relationships matter.”

“He’s not interested in reelection, which is so exciting,” Washington said, “and so he doesn’t make decisions out a fear to get reelected. He literally said to me one day—I said, ‘Hey, if we end this contract, it’s gonna be all over the newspapers,’ and he said, ‘I don’t make decisions that way, I make decisions out of doing the right thing.'”

Mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen said Washington “was saying that the mayor makes decisions not based on what is popular, or in other words what will support a re-election campaign, but based on what is the right thing to do.”

Density, Development, housing, legislature

As Density Bills Move Forward, It’s Statewide Housing Goals vs. “Local Control”
1908 apartment building in Seattle. Source: Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 2.0 license.

By Ryan Packer

At the halfway mark of the 2023 legislative session, the state house and senate are both moving ahead with a number of bills that would change land use in cities across the state, with the goal of increasing the supply of new housing over the coming decades. But the two chambers have gone in starkly different directions when it comes to the specifics, with the house leaning harder into pro-density proposals.

When House Bill 1110, one of the highest-profile bills dealing with local zoning this year, passed its final house committee last Friday on a bipartisan vote, the core idea of the bill was still intact despite a few major amendments: Cities must allow more density in areas that are currently zoned for single-family use. 

Specifically, the bill would require many smaller cities to allow duplexes in residential areas, and cities with more than 75,000 people, or suburbs of large cities like Seattle and Spokane, would have to allow fourplexes everywhere and six-unit buildings within a quarter mile of frequent transit stops, major parks, and public schools. The amended bill is a downgrade from the original version, which would have allowed more density in even more cities across the state, but would still represent a significant increase in the amount of density allowed in cities across Washington. 

The bill has come under intense criticism from local elected officials who don’t want to lose their ability to restrict development in some of their cities’ lowest-density neighborhoods.

“I’m just really concerned with the impact to the character of our neighborhoods,” Bellevue Deputy Mayor Jared Nieuwenhuis said in January.

“This bill completely disregards critical local context and will surely lead to untold and unintended consequences,” Woodinville City Manager Brandon Buchanan told the house appropriations committee last week. Woodinville, Edmonds, and Mercer Island have all adopted formal resolutions or written letters to lawmakers opposing the legislation, while individual officials in other cities have also criticized the bill. “I’m just really concerned with the impact to the character of our neighborhoods,” Bellevue Deputy Mayor Jared Nieuwenhuis said in January. Despite this pushback, the bill is moving toward a vote on the house floor.

The bill’s supporters contend that it doesn’t interfere with local control. Instead, they argue, it allows property owners to do more with their land, with a goal of increasing the “missing middle”—buildings that are larger than a single-family home but smaller than an apartment complex. Older examples of these buildings  exist in many neighborhoods but can no longer be built under modern zoning rules.

“We have to make it easier to build housing,” Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia), the prime sponsor of HB 1110, said at the bill’s first hearing in January. “As a former city councilmember and planning commissioner, I can tell you that the majority of cities make it either illegal outright to build middle housing throughout the majority of their residential land use areas, or they make it infeasible by creating things like minimum lot size or minimum set back requirements.”

The senate companion bill to HB 1110, sponsored by Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27, Tacoma), did not move forward. Instead, the senate Ways and Means Committee advanced Senate Bill 5466, Senator Marko Liias’ (D-21, Edmonds) bill that would require cities to allow higher-density apartment buildings, condos, and office buildings near transit. That bill has seen fewer tweaks so far, and currently would require cities to allow buildings of around five stories in height for three-quarters of a mile around any transit stop with service every twenty minutes during peak hours, and larger buildings, around eight or nine stories, closer to the most frequent transit like light rail. 

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With the Washington Department of Commerce now projecting that the state will need an additional million new housing units to keep up with population growth over the next two decades, no single approach to increasing supply will be enough to meet the demand. An analysis of HB 1110 by the Puget Sound Regional Council found that the changes in the bill could produce just over 200,000 new housing units in the central Puget Sound region, where most new housing will be concentrated, in the next 20 years—a fraction of the need, but a start.

The house and senate are approaching density differently in other zoning legislation as well, including a pair of bills intended to remove barriers to building backyard or basement apartments, known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs). House Bill 1337, sponsored by Rep. Mia Gregerson (D-33, Burien), would require cities to comply with at least three of four guidelines for new ADUs: no off-street parking requirements, no on-site residency requirements for people who build an ADU on their property, a limit on impact fees, which can discourage homeowners to build ADUs, and allowing two ADUs per property.

In contrast, Senate Bill 5235, sponsored by Sen. Sharon Shewmake (D-42, Bellingham), would allow cities to limit the number of ADUs on small lots, and allow cities to require parking for all ADUs except for a quarter-mile from major transit stops. The bill would ban owner occupancy requirements, but not when a homeowner wants to use their ADU for a short-term rental.  Shewmake, a former state representative in her first year as a senator, sponsored a similar bill last year in the house that didn’t make it to the senate floor, but this week the senate resoundingly approved this year’s version of the bill, by a vote of 42-6.

“I support both bills, and if I could have signed onto [Gregerson’s] bill I would have…I just think we need to do things that are also going to pass.”—Sen. Sharon Shewmake (D-42, Bellingham)

The house let its companion bill to SB 5235, HB 1276, sponsored by Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46), die ahead of a committee deadline in February, focusing instead on HB 1337. “This is the strong one… the one that will get things done quickly,” Rep. Andy Barkis, (R-2, Olympia), one of 1337’s sponsors, said at a hearing on both bills. HB 1337 is facing opposition because it’s much more prescriptive about what cities have to allow.

“I support both bills, and if I could have signed onto [Gregerson’s] bill I would have…I just think we need to do things that are also going to pass,” Shewmake told PubliCola. “Maybe Mia’s will be the one that passes, because she has that bipartisan support, or this will be the one that passes, and they can be folded one into the.”

Shewmake said she saw the two competing ADU bills as a bellwether. “Figuring out what we can get off the floor with this ADU bill is going to be important for figuring out what we can do generally on housing,” she said. In other words, if the senate doesn’t pass HB 1337, it’s probably not going to consider even more substantive changes like HB 1110.

Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle), who has signed onto HB 1110 and also sponsored the house version of Liias’s bill, HB 1517, told PubliCola, “You kind of have to have both…because of the way our cities are quite spread out, in Washington State, and because of the types of homes that people are looking for. …Not everybody wants to live in a multi-unit apartment building. Some people are really looking for that fourplex, that townhouse, [or] the duplex model just fits their family and their lifestyle better.” 

House Speaker Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D-34, Seattle) conceded that local control can be in tension with statewide housing goals. “Cities have a tough job, and we recognize that, and we want to make that job easier by making a floor for jurisdictions, small, medium and large… knowing that Seattle is not the same as Moses Lake, but the housing shortage impacts every part of our state,” he said during a press briefing in late February. 

One of his counterparts on the senate side, Deputy Majority Leader Manka Dhingra (D-45, Redmond), pushed back on the idea that the senate was being more conservative and timid about changing local zoning. “I’m not sure I would say that the senate is more deferential to local control versus the house,” she said. “But I think that is a struggle that is always front and center.” 

ryan@publicola.com

Density, Development, Maybe Metropolis, neighborhoods

Maybe Metropolis: The NIMBY Illusion
Image via Grand Illusion Cinema (Facebook)

By Josh Feit

Back in 2018—as a Gen X traitor, evidently—I editorialized against saving the Showbox. I was opposed to making policy based on ’90s nostalgia and was for building new housing coupled with the $5 million in affordable housing funds the development would generate from the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program.

At the time, a City Hall legislative staffer asked me in earnest if there was any spot around town that would turn me into a NIMBY if it was slated to get torn down and replaced with fancy condos? I honestly couldn’t think of anything that fit the bill.

But now comes the latest in Seattle-is-changing news: The Grand Illusion, the independent movie house at 50th and University Way NE (the Ave), may be the next casualty of real estate development. It’s still not 100 percent clear what the fate of the Grand Illusion will be, but according to a January 23 Daily Journal of Commerce report, real estate developer Kidder Mathews is offering the building for $2.8 million on behalf of the theater’s longtime owner. For now, the theater, which has been around since 1970, has signed another two-year lease, and they say they’re set on finding a new home.

The news hits me in the gut. True story: Just 10 days before I read about the Grand Illusion’s hazy future, I went to a movie at the groovy theater (for the first time since the pandemic, and likely even well before that). Excited to find the place as lively as ever—a disheveled goth was working at the combo ticket/refreshments booth before a nearly sold-out Friday night show—I ended up making a contribution to the nonprofit the very next day. Over the years, I’ve seen countless indie, foreign, art, and cult films at the Grand Illusion while eating a bucket of popcorn heavily dusted in nutritional yeast. I even attended former Seattle city council member Nick Licata’s wedding there, sitting in the rickety yet plush red seating. I’ve also spent a healthy dose of time in the adjacent tortured-poet coffee shop. The Grand Illusion defines Ave culture.

The countercultural Seattle landmark is in a precarious spot because current Seattle zoning prohibits housing and businesses just about everywhere else in the city.

As a pro-development urbanist, I could be called a hypocrite for fretting over the fate of this charming, grunge-y spot. But actually, the potential closure of the Grand Illusion simply confirms the basic problem with Seattle’s zoning code I’ve been writing about for more than 20 years. The reason developers buy up spots in exciting locations like 50th and the Ave. is because these spots are typically located in the few slices of the city that are zoned for multi-family and mixed-use development. “Under current zoning, the listing … estimates that a six-story building could yield 31 apartments,” the DJC reported.

This fact underscores an even more germane point: Offing the Grand Illusion for density is redundant. The block where the theater now stands already works the way a smart city should, with its surrounding dense zoning and plentiful transit. Unfortunately, the area is an oasis of six- and seven-story neighborhood commercial zoning in a desert of land zoned for low-density and single-family housing (and no commercial space). We don’t need more businesses and housing on the Ave.—we need them in the surrounding low-density residential zones.

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The YIMBY position remains as it has always been: Put more housing and businesses in the suburban-esque tracts of Seattle where we should have more economic diversity. Unfortunately, with density cordoned off into just 25 percent of the city’s residential land, developers have limited places to build. And so it’s the dense urban areas where beloved, longstanding institutions—Piecora’s on Capitol Hill, Mama’s Mexican Kitchen in Belltown, Tup Tim Thai on Lower Queen Anne—get replaced by apartments. Meanwhile, the strictly single-family tracts stay untouched as the people who live there see their assets grow.

I’m not going to start a petition drive or sign onto a “Save the Grand Illusion” campaign—a la the cringe-worthy, largely white and Gen X effort to save the Showbox. Instead, I’ll point out that the news comes with an explanation slow-growthers won’t like: The Grand Illusion isn’t on the chopping block because of some pro-developer bent in Seattle’s zoning rules. The countercultural Seattle landmark is in a precarious spot right now because current Seattle zoning restricts housing and businesses just about everywhere else in the city.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Development, housing, legislature

State Proposal Would Ban Design Review—Except for Historic Buildings and Districts
Wallingford Historic District map
Under one amendment, proposals for new housing in the “Wallingford-Meridian Historic Streetcar District” would still be subject to strict aesthetic review.

By Ryan Packer

Last week, the state House housing committee approved a bill that would effectively prohibit cities, including Seattle, from subjecting housing developers to design review—a controversial process in which a group of volunteers make aesthetic judgments about, and require often minute changes to, proposed developments.

These boards can subject architectural firms to multiple rounds of tweaks, adding unpredictability to project timelines, with potential new homes frequently held up for months based on highly subjective aesthetic criteria.

The bill would upend that process. But a proposed amendment could leave a large loophole by preserving design review for projects in so-called historic districts.

House Bill 1026, introduced by Rep. Amy Walen (D-48, Kirkland), would restrict design review for proposed housing developments to “administrative” review, conducted by city staff who would would be limited to considering whether a project adheres to guidelines established by the city.

The amendment added last week by Rep. Mari Leavitt (D-28, University Place) would allow cities to keep design review boards for buildings, and entire neighborhoods, that are listed on a local, state, or national historic register.

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Historic districts within the City of Seattle, like Pioneer Square, Columbia City, and the International District, have boards that review proposals to build or modify housing and other buildings in those areas. Leavitt’s amendment would not only allow this review process to continue while other design review boards elsewhere are being phased out, but expand this enhanced review process to all neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places. In Seattle, that would include neighborhoods like Montlake, Roanoke Park, and a broad swath of Wallingford, which was added to the federal register, despite significant opposition, last year. These districts include many non-historic buildings alongside arguably historic ones.

Immediately after the housing committee unanimously adopted the amendment, lawmakers started talking about walking it back. “I do have concerns. I think we can refine the language to make sure that entire neighborhoods…aren’t said to be historic for the purpose of limiting opportunities to increase housing and increase density,” Rep. Strom Peterson (D-21, Edmonds), who chairs the housing committee, said.

Peterson is now proposing an amendment that would only require design review for individual structures, not entire historic districts. It’s not clear how this would impact historic districts like the International District, where every structure is not a city landmark, or whether cities could skirt the restrictions by landmarking every single building in a neighborhood. Legislators will vote on that amendment on the House floor before the bill proceeds to the Senate.

City Council, Density, Development, Historic Preservation, housing

In Reversal, Council Poised to Preserve Landmarked Drive-Through Walgreen’s
Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

Update on Tuesday, Jan. 10: The council voted to adopt Councilmember Lisa Herbold’s amendment, described in more detail below, to impose controls and incentives preventing any changes to the landmarked Walgreen’s building on Denny Way while removing the surface parking lot from the area subject to landmark protections. Herbold’s “compromise” plan also included a new amendment from Andrew Lewis that added the driveway and a few other small elements of the property to the part of the lot that won’t be subject to restrictions, increasing the non-protected part of the property to around 14,000 square feet.

Council members who voted for Herbold’s proposal cited various reasons for doing so. Lewis said he supported preserving the façade of the building (seen above) while allowing development; however, the protections the council imposed actually bar changes to the entire building unless the city’s landmarks board approves them.

Kshama Sawant railed against the council’s “Democrats” and housing developers in general, raising a straw-man argument about the fact that any potential housing on the site wouldn’t be affordable to low-income people, which no one suggested it would. And Sara Nelson, who voted against protecting the Walgreen’s just last week, justified her change of heart by saying that aligning the city’s housing goals with historic preservation would take a “long time” and would need to be done at some later date. Ultimately, the legislation passed unanimously, with Tammy Morales and Teresa Mosqueda voting against the initial Herbold amendment but supporting it once it was the only option on the table.

Original post follows:

In a reversal of a committee vote last week, the Seattle city council appears poised to preserve a drive-through Walgreen’s on the edge of South Lake Union, after Councilmember Tammy Morales (who previously opposed preservation) accepted as a “friendly amendment” a proposal by Councilmember Lisa Herbold to “protect” the one-story building and driveway, but not its parking lot. The legislation on the council’s agenda Tuesday afternoon would require Walgreen’s, or any subsequent owner, to obtain approval from the city’s landmarks board before making any visible changes to the building.

PubliCola has written extensively about the 1950 structure, which was originally a drive-through bank—a novel convenience at a time when American car culture was just ramping up. The building was one of many copies of a 1946 prototype created for Seattle-First National Bank, many of which are still standing in Seattle and across the region.

A lot of things have changed since the former bank building was landmarked in 2010. An explosion of jobs brought a need for new housing in Uptown and South Lake Union, and the council voted to upzone the area in 2017, allowing new apartment towers to serve the thousands of new people working in the burgeoning tech hub. The site where the Walgreen’s stands, for example, was rezoned to allow a 160-foot tower. Today, the building stands out as one of the only car-oriented, single-story businesses in the area.

How could it be that a parking lot that makes up less than half of the Walgreen’s site could yield more housing than the entire property? The answer is: It can’t, except on paper.

Morales, along with her colleague Andrew Lewis, appeared convinced Monday by a staff analysis that concluded a developer could actually fit more housing on the Walgreen’s block if the housing was squeezed onto the 12,000-square-foot parking lot—up to 310 units, or even more if the building included amenities like a school, which many downtown residents have been trying to site for years.

“Compared to what is possible if we completely remove the controls and incentives or if we leave the legislation as is, there are additional 30 to 60 units possible,” Morales said at the council’s weekly briefing.

“I really appreciate the the creativity of Councilmember Herbold in presenting all these incentives together to show the potential of what the maximum number of units could be,” Lewis added.

How could it be that a parking lot that makes up less than half of the Walgreen’s site could yield more housing than the entire property? The answer is: It can’t, except on paper.

Setting aside the unlikely possibility of a new school inside a skinny residential tower, getting to 310 units requires some creative math. To build that many units, a developer would have to qualify for every incentive available under city law, including one that allows a development to cover more of a lot if their building includes at least ten units of “family sized” housing with three bedrooms or more. In practice, apartment developers rarely build units that size, because they don’t pencil out—two-parent families who can afford to pay $5,000 to $12,000 a month (the going rate for the handful of available three-bedroom apartments in new buildings near South Lake Union) would usually be better off buying a place instead

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Even in the analysis Herbold used to argue that a smaller building would have more apartments, a council staffer acknowledged that it “would be hard to fit [that many units] on the lot without building above the bank building”—that is, demolishing the Walgreen’s and putting up a new building in its place, perhaps preserving the façade. This alternative is basically the same as not preserving the building at all—except that it couldn’t happen without  the approval of the same landmarks board that requested protections for the building in the first place.

Another scenario would be a skinny tower on the site of the current parking lot, which, at just 11,700 square feet, would be among the smallest tower locations in the city. This would be unlikely to pencil out under any circumstances, because so much of the oddly-shaped site would be taken up by the building’s elevator shaft, but the presence of the SR 99 tunnel directly underneath the site would make building a tall, thin tower even more of an underground engineering challenge. For this scenario to pencil out, the building would almost certainly be limited (like many others in the area) to studio or micro-units, which rent for more per square foot than larger apartments—great for young tech migrants, but less ideal for producing a neighborhood with a diverse range of ages, incomes, and family types.

Even in the analysis Herbold used to argue that a smaller building would have more apartments, a council staffer acknowledged that it “would be hard to fit [that many units] on the lot without building above the bank building”—that is, demolishing the Walgreen’s and putting up a new building in its place, perhaps preserving the façade. This alternative is basically the same as not preserving the building at all—except that it couldn’t happen without the approval of the same landmarks board that requested protections for the building in the first place.

The other alternative—the one that preservationists like Historic Seattle and Herbold seem to actually support—is to allow Walgreen’s to sell off the development rights for the lot to another developer in the neighborhood, preserving the building and its drive-through lane in perpetuity while allowing development elsewhere.

The problem is that selling the development potential of the Walgreen’s site almost certainly wouldn’t lead to an equivalent number of new apartments. That’s because when property owners sell development rights, what they’re really selling is extra floor-area ratio (FAR), a measure of how much of a piece of land a building can occupy. The more FAR a developer has, the taller or wider the building, depending on the rules in that area. In the Uptown, where 160-foot building are already allowed everywhere, additional FAR will allow developers to build outward, eliminating amenities they would otherwise have to include, like open space, green streets, and setbacks between sidewalks and the building.

The council will vote on Herbold’s proposal tomorrow afternoon. So far, only Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda has publicly expressed reservations about the plan, saying she worried that Herbold’s proposal “would reduce the site to such [an extent] that it would not be feasible to build to build multifamily units on this site.”

Affordability, Density, Development, legislature, Maybe Metropolis, neighborhoods

Maybe Metropolis: Pro-Housing Democrats Poised for Action in 2023 After Ousting Obstructionist Seattle Rep. Pollet
Finetooth, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons

By Josh Feit

Before I get to last week’s quiet yet encouraging news out of Olympia—House Democrats removed single family zoning preservationist Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, N. Seattle) from his position overseeing housing policy—I’d like to review a couple of other recent, below-the-radar news items that provide context for why such a seemingly picayune parliamentary move in the state legislature matters for Seattle.

First, in October, the Washington State Advisory Council on Historic Preservation decided to okay a request from Wallingford homeowners to put hundreds of houses in Wallingford on the National Register of Historic Places; this week, the National Parks Service made it official.

Expect to see more and more attempts by “In this House” Seattleites to weaponize “historic” districts as a tool against reforming local land use policy that could otherwise increase affordable housing and density in Seattle.

Meanwhile, another quiet zoning decision reflected the opposite path: Last month, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted against landmarking the “unremarkable” (as Erica hilariously put it) two-story wood-framed Jai Thai building on Capitol Hill. The decision cleared the way for a new seven-story affordable housing development.

You can attribute Pollet’s NIMBY politics to an old-fashioned brand of lefty populism that elevates provincialism (knee-jerk suspicion of development mixed with tired exhortations about neighborhood “character”) into a fight to preserve single-family zoning.

Unfortunately, these two decisions taken together ultimately reaffirm the prevalence of Seattle’s off-kilter city planning philosophy: Seattle confines multi-story density to the same neighborhoods over and over, while foregoing opportunities for new housing in the hefty majority of the city—75 percent— that’s currently zoned exclusively for detached single-family houses. Sadly, Capitol Hill’s density is a Catch-22 for urbanists: Enthusiastically adding units to one of Seattle’s densest neighborhoods provides fodder for the city’s redundant single-family zones to ward off reforms that could create new housing. This preserves the status quo: Skyrocketing housing prices. The Seattle area has some of the most expensive housing prices in the country, with median rents above $1,700 (over $2,200 in the Seattle region) and a median sale price of $810,000.

It’s no wonder King County says we need to build around 240,000 new affordable units in the next 20 years, or 12,000 new units a year. Currently, we’re nowhere close to that pace; over the last two years, according to the Seattle Office of Housing, the city averaged about 1,300 affordable units a year.

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Thankfully, pro-housing folks are fighting to reverse this trend. Witness the long overdue progressive coup in Olympia. Earlier this month, under youthful, new leadership, the state house Democrats finally removed Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, N Seattle) as chair of the pivotal House local government committee. As we have been reporting for years, Rep. Pollet has repeatedly used his position to kill pro-housing bills. (No surprise, The Urbanist has also called out Pollet for undermining housing legislation.) You can attribute Pollet’s NIMBY politics to an old-fashioned brand of lefty populism that elevates provincialism (knee-jerk suspicion of development mixed with tired exhortations about neighborhood “character”) into a fight to preserve single-family zoning.

Initially, frustrated with Pollet’s history of watering down pro-housing legislation, the House Democratic Caucus voted in late November to shrink the scope of Pollet’s committee by moving all housing issues into the housing committee, whose chair, Rep. Strom Peterson (D-21, Everett) supports urbanist legislation. Last year, for example, Peterson co-sponsored Rep. Jessica Bateman’s (D-22, Olympia) bill, HB 1782, that would have authorized duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in residential areas within a half-mile of a major transit stops. It was one of several pro-density bills Pollet helped kill last year. 

The move to take housing policy out of Pollet’s committee was orchestrated by a new generation of Democrats who want to send a message that affordable housing (tied to density) will be a top priority in 2023.

Two weeks later—evidently not done sending their message—the caucus voted to remove Pollet as chair of the local government committee altogether, handing the reins to Rep. Devina Duerr (D-1, Bothell), another co-sponsor of last year’s failed density bill.

With much better odds of passing their bills intact out of Peterson’s committee than under Pollet’s provincialism, pro-housing legislators could bring some necessary state governance to Seattle’s failed local policies.

The Seattle Times, whose editorial board shares Pollet’s preservationist POV, ran an editorial last week lamenting the leadership sea change by parroting Pollet’s go-to  “local control” mantra, claiming that pro-housing bills would prohibit local governments from enacting affordable housing requirements. That’s untrue. The bills that urbanists like Rep. Bateman support simply give local jurisdictions the option to allow multifamily housing in single-family neighborhoods, leaving affordable housing requirements in the hands of local jurisdictions.

“If we’re really concerned with affordable housing,” Rep. Bateman told PubliCola, “let’s first acknowledge some basic facts: Single-family zoning is 100 percent displacing people and causing gentrification.”

This status quo—not the bogeyman of future development—constitutes a current threat to housing affordability. For example, existing policy not only squeezes supply by making most of the available land in Seattle off-limits to multifamily housing, it also encourages teardowns and McMansions. Rep. Bateman’s pending, more ambitious 2023 proposal will challenge that status quo by authorizing fourplexes in residential areas of cities across the state—anywhere detached single-family homes are allowed.

Data show that even this modest increase in density improves affordability. Portland made fourplexes legal citywide two years ago and the first set of numbers indicates that they are more affordable to rent or purchase than duplexes, triplexes, or single-family homes. Additionally, Bateman said her legislation will create an affordability incentive with a “density bonus” that allows scaling up to sixplexes if two of the units are affordable to people making between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income.

On the state senate side, Sen. Marko Liias (D-21, Everett) is cueing up legislation that would target upzones (more dramatic ones) specifically near transit hubs.

This is all to say, for more news that could end up having big implications in the coming year: Pay attention to the state legislature’s prefiled bills page and watch for new pro-housing legislation. With much better odds of passing their bills intact out of Peterson’s committee than under Pollet’s provincialism, pro-housing legislators could bring some necessary state governance to Seattle’s failed local policies.

Addiction, City Council, Development, Morning Fizz, Police

Diaz Almost Permanent Chief; Sawant Wants Impact Fees; Another Residential Treatment Center Shuts Down

1. Members of the city council’s public safety committee, which voted unanimously to appoint interim police chief Adrian Diaz to the permanent police chief position on Tuesday, were mostly effusive about Diaz’ performance at the final public hearing on his appointment, praising him for his efforts to recruit new officers, reinstate the community service officer program, and work collaboratively with the council. Council members did have a few pointed questions, though, about Diaz’ commitment to replacing police with civilian responders.

Like many other cities across the country, Seattle committed to creating new community-based alternatives to traditional policing amid protests against police violence in 2020; since then, other cities have moved forward with new strategies while Seattle has bogged down in process.

“Around the same time that members of this council were talking about creating a third public safety department and civilian alternatives to police, Albuquerque also started their journey. The difference between them and us is that we have two years of resolutions, workgroups, promises, talking, [and] misrepresentations [from the previous administration].”—Councilmember Andrew Lewis

“Around the same time that members of this council were talking about creating a third public safety department and civilian alternatives to police, Albuquerque also started their journey,” Councilmember Andrew Lewis said. Albuquerque, Lewis noted, has a similar budget to Seattle’s and has also seen its police department shrink from around 1,400 to fewer than 1,000 officers.

“The difference between them and us is that we have two years of resolutions, workgroups, promises, talking, [and] misrepresentations” from the previous mayoral administration, while Albuquerque stood up its new public safety department in 2021 and has diverted thousands of calls from the police department.

As we’ve reported, SPD is still in the middle of a lengthy risk analysis that is supposed to determine which kind of 911 calls are safe enough for a civilian response. That process is expected to stretch into 2024. Meanwhile, according to SPD’s latest hiring projections, the department will only grow by 18 fully trained officers in the next two years.

While transferring some low-risk work to trained civilian responders would be one way to free up SPD officers for police work and investigations, another option could be reducing the amount of overtime police burn through directing traffic and providing security for sports events, which added up to more than 91,000 hours through October of this year. Diaz didn’t seem particularly open to this suggestion, either, noting that there is always a risk of violence at large events, such as someone trying to drive through a barricade.

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2.  Also on Tuesday, the city council voted unanimously to move forward with a plan to exempt many affordable housing projects from the design review process for another year—effectively signing off on the once-controversial view that design review leads to unnecessary delays that makes housing more expensive.

However, one of those “yes” votes, Councilmember Kshama Sawant, voted “no” on a separate package of amendments to the city’s comprehensive plan because they did not include “developer impact fees,” which some cities levy on housing developers to offset the toll new residents create on urban infrastructure like roads and sewers. One reason such fees are controversial is that they imply that new housing has a negative impact on the city, without considering the positive impacts (such as reduced traffic congestion, less sprawl, and more customers for local businesses) of dense, vibrant neighborhoods.

Since the city can’t pass developer impact fees until they’re included in the comprehensive plan, Sawant said, the vote to approve the amendments “means that we need to wait another year to make big developers pay for the impacts they have on our city infrastructure and for the profits they make without paying even this minimum of compensation for the city’s working people.” During the 2020 budget deliberations, Sawant joined her colleague Councilmember Alex Pedersen in seeking $350,000 for a study of impact fees; although Pedersen is generally far to the right of socialist Sawant, a shared opposition to most development frequently puts them on the same side of housing-related issues.

Low-income people and people experiencing homelessness often have to wait weeks or months before getting into residential treatment—a fact that flies in the face of calls to force more people in crisis into treatment under the state’s involuntary treatment law.

3. Pioneer Human Services, which offers treatment to low-income people with substance use disorder, is closing its 50-bed Pioneer Center North facility in Skagit County next month amid an acute regional shortage of residential treatment beds for low-income people and people seeking treatment during or after serving time in jail.

According to agency spokeswoman Nanette Sorich, there were a number of reasons for the “difficult decision,” including the fact that “the building has been operating on a short-term lease and the facility is past its useful life. Additionally, like many behavioral health providers, we have faced significant challenges with staffing and these labor force shortages have become more acute over time,” Sorich said.

The Sedro-Wooley inpatient clinic had 77 beds before the pandemic. Pioneer Human Services will now refer potential clients to its other clinics in Everett and Spokane, Sorich said.

Low-income people and people experiencing homelessness often have to wait weeks or months before getting into residential treatment—a fact that flies in the face of calls to force more people in crisis into treatment under the state’s involuntary treatment law. Since 2018, King County has lost more than 110 residential treatment beds and is now down to 244 beds countywide. A countywide levy, on the ballot next April, would restore the number of residential beds in King County to 2018 levels; the bulk of the $1.25 billion proposal would go toward five new walk-in crisis stabilization centers across the county.

Affordability, City Council, Density, Development, Guest Contributor, homelessness, housing, Mayor Harrell

For a Welcoming City, Design Review Reforms Must Go Further
Image via Phinneyflats.com
This four-story building, the Phinney Flats on busy Greenwood Avenue North, was delayed for years by design review meetings in which critics called it “Soviet-style” architecture and said renters would disrupt their peace and quiet with loud rooftop parties.

By Laura Loe

Editor’s note: This is a followup to It’s Time to Ditch Design Review.

I’ve been advocating for reforming Seattle’s design review process, in which appointed boards impose aesthetic requirements (and delays) on dense new housing, since 2016. I’ve attended many hours-long design review meetings, hosted lunch-and-learns about this gate-kept and arcane process, and created user-friendly advocacy documents to help community members participate in the process. But design review is irreparably broken. It’s a way to object to new neighbors, not an opportunity to make neighborhoods better.

The city appears to agree: In 2013, the Department of Construction and Inspections recommended simplifying the process in response to public feedback. “Most complaints [during public comment for design review] are NIMBY-ism,” one focus group participant put it.

On December 8, 2022, the City Council’s land use committee unanimously passed legislation from committee chair Dan Strauss that will extend COVID-era rules exempting some affordable housing from design review for one year. While the bill is a rare win for Seattle’s future, it does not address the scale and scope of our housing crisis.

But why don’t we want to make all housing less affordable? Market-rate housing doesn’t deserve the punishment of the often capricious design review process, either.

Exempting affordable housing from design review is a win for those of us who have advocated for reforms—a clear acknowledgement that design review makes affordable housing less affordable.

But why don’t we want to make all housing less affordable? Market-rate housing doesn’t deserve the punishment of the often capricious design review process, either. Multi-family, market-rate development in Seattle provides essential housing for Seattle renters. It contributes to Mandatory Housing Affordability, a program that requires developers to fund affordable housing either elsewhere or on site. And it increases our overall supply of housing—a necessity if we’re going combat the housing scarcity that leads to homelessness, as housing scholar Gregg Colburn and data journalist Clayton Aldern documented recently in the book Homelessness is a Housing Problem.

There have even been recent examples where market-rate housing has become available to those with deep housing insecurity through “rapid acquisition” by affordable housing developers.

A few weeks ago, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced that the one-year extension of the design review exemption will allow the city to conduct a full environmental review of legislation that would permanently exempt some affordable housing projects from design review and begin two new pilot programs, each lasting two years.

The first pilot would exempt from design review any projects that use the city’s (highly effective) Mandatory Housing Affordability program to produce new units on-site, instead of contributing to a housing fund. The second would allow developers of all kinds of housing, including market-rate housing, to choose whether to participate in the full design review process or a shorter Administrative Design Review (ADR) by city staff.

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ADR follows the same steps as full design review; the difference is that the applications are reviewed privately by a Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) planner, not a public design review board.

The interim legislation, which is expected to pass at the tomorrow’s city council meeting, is an acknowledgment that design review is a superfluous hurdle to addressing our housing crisis. We hope to see additional bold proposals from Strauss.

While we celebrate this rare win, we are disappointed that Harrell’s announcement does not address the flaws in design review generally and doesn’t address challenges with the administrative design review (ADR) processes at all.

Merely exempting subsidized housing projects from the current design review process doesn’t come close to meeting the breadth of recommendations from community coalitions in September 2021 to fix this onerous, costly, and undemocratic process. We would like to see a complete overhaul of the program instead of the pilot Mayor Harrell has proposed, including a transformation of administrative design review itself.

One architect said the administrative process provides “no dialogue or recourse” that would help builders understand “why a planner asks you to do things.” Because of this risk of delays, many builders may opt for the “devil you know” public design review process.

Although ADR is less onerous than the full design-review process, it’s still no picnic for professionals trying to build housing. One study documented delays at a high level. After initial community engagement in the early stages, projects that go through administrative review are not visible to the public. This means NIMBY neighbors can’t interfere, but it also means advocates like myself lack insight into internal deliberations and can’t to counter potential NIMBY objections from city staff.

According to several builders I’ve spoken to, ADR can be significantly more unpredictable, lengthy, and costly than going through a design review board. Builders describe city staffers interjecting their personal aesthetic tastes as they pick and choose which design guidelines to enforce— an ineffective and unjust way to apply policy. One architect said the administrative process provides “no dialogue or recourse” that would help builders understand “why a planner asks you to do things.” Because of this risk of delays, many builders may not opt for administrative review and will continue to participate in the “devil you know” public design review process.

Design review is not making our city more resilient, more climate-friendly, more affordable, or more welcoming. Let’s not continue to conflate nostalgia and anti-renter calls for preserving neighborhood “character” with livability and wellbeing for all. The city must follow this rare win for Seattle’s future with the comprehensive reforms outlined by Seattle For Everyone, a pro-housing coalition that includes developers and housing advocates, with a particular focus on reforms to administrative design review.

The council will take public comment on its design review reform legislation at 2pm tomorrow, December 13. Please write or call in to support the provision to exempt low-income affordable projects from design review while pushing the city (and the mayor) to systematically fix the process.

Laura Loe is the founder of Share The Cities Organizing Collective, an all-volunteer advocacy group.

Affordability, Development, Historic Preservation, housing

Board Declines to Landmark Unremarkable Capitol Hill Building, Allowing Affordable Housing to Move Ahead

Current photo of 229 Broadway on Capitol Hill

By Erica C. Barnett

In an unusual move for a group that has tended to prioritize preserving old buildings over new housing, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted against landmarking the two-story wood-framed Wilshire Building on Capitol Hill, commonly known as the Jai Thai building for its most recent anchor tenant. A city staff report also recommended against landmarking the building, saying it failed or probably failed to meet the two most likely criteria for landmarking.

Low-income housing developer TAP Collaborative bought the building at the corner of Thomas St. and Broadway Ave. E in 2018 with the intention of tearing down the old building and replacing it with a seven-story building that would be 100 percent affordable to people making 60 percent or less of the Seattle area median income, currently around $54,000. In 2022, that works out to rents between $1,350 and $1,450 a month for a studio, and one-bedroom, respectively. Earlier this year, City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda announced that the project would be among the first recipients of affordable housing funds from the JumpStart payroll tax.

The current building plan includes 26 studios, 69 one-bedrooms, five larger live/work units, plus retail space on the ground floor and parking spaces for 90 bikes (and zero cars). Landmark status would have almost certainly scuttled those plans.

“[Broadway] is becoming a canyon of modern buildings. So here’s a chance to preserve the exterior of one of the old ones.”—Landmarks board member Harriett Wasserman, one of two members who voted to preserve the Jai Thai building

The developer nominated the building for landmark status, a common move to get the process underway and to preempt landmark applications by preservationists, whose aim is to preserve old buildings. Historic Seattle, for example, weighed in earlier this year to suggest that the developer could both save the building and build affordable housing on site, although they did not offer any suggestions for building new apartments in or around the existing building, which is not up to seismic standards and does not have a separate façade that might be preserved as part of a new development.

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“The building has long surpassed its economic useful life, given the decision at the time of construction to use inexpensive materials,” TAP Collaborative principal Rebecca Ralston told PubliCola. “When we acquired the building, we knew we were not dealing with a heavy timber or masonry structure so we had not anticipated the landmarking process. However, I cannot say it took us entirely by surprise, given its age.”

To be eligible for landmark status in Seattle, a building has to be at least 25 years old (in current terms, built before 1998) and meet one of six criteria. Three of the criteria have to do with the historical significance of the site (for example, if it was the site of a major historical event); the other three are about the building itself—whether it “embodies” an architectural style or is a distinctive work by a major architect, for example.

The building on Broadway Ave. East, designed by Seattle architect Henry Dozier and completed in 1903, has housed a number of typical neighborhood businesses over the years, including drug stores, groceries, restaurants, and a maternity home for young women where young women with unwanted pregnancies were “sent away.”

Historical photo of the Wilshire Building from 1937
The Wilshire Building in 1937, when the speed limit on Broadway was 20 mph!

Visually, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the Jai Thai building, which looks like what it is— an old, slightly run-down brick-clad wooden structure with small businesses, including the Mud Bay pet supply store and a hair salon, on both floors. But Seattle is a young city, with few buildings more than 100 years old, and local preservationists have a habit of clinging to old buildings based entirely or primarily on their age.

“The lack of a specific architectural style, the lack of a notable patron, the lack of a celebrated architect, the lack of a documented historic event—these are the criteria by which a historic building should be evaluated, not whether or not one thinks it is charming and adds character to the neighborhood.”—Affordable housing developer Rebecca Ralston

At Wednesday’s landmarks board meeting, two advocates for landmarking the building—architectural historian Ian MacLeod and retired college IT director Harriett Wasserman—called out some of its distinctive features, like the arched windows on the second floor. They also made the case that Seattle’s history is “disappearing” as the city permits new buildings to replace old ones; Wasserman said the overall feel of Broadway has changed, and that preserving a low-rise commercial building, “even if it’s not as pretty as it once was,” would help stem the tide of modernity.

“The street is becoming a canyon of modern buildings,” Wasserman said. “So here’s a chance to preserve the exterior of one of the old ones.” Buildings on Broadway, like most “urban villages” around the city, can’t be taller than seven stories.

Dozier, the building’s architect, had a checkered history. Consultant Ellen Mirro, who prepared the landmark nomination, described Dozier on Wednesday as a “terrible” person who abandoned his mentally ill wife and nine children in Colorado in 1896—a story the local press covered breathlessly at the time. Dozier was also a virulent racist and early proponent of eugenics who wrote poems and letters to the editor of the Seattle Times denouncing Japanese Americans living in Seattle.

Although landmarks board members didn’t dwell on Dozier’s personal history, several were very interested in the building’s use as a maternity home, history Mirro’s firm, Studio TJP, uncovered in their research. Several board members suggested that this previously unknown history might be a basis for landmarking the building; MacLeod, for example, called the “maternity ward aspect of the history… really interesting and really unique” and suggested the “marginalized women” who used the maternity services might present a “parallel narrative” to the “LGBT history of Capitol Hill.”

Using theoretical marginalized women from the past to justify preserving the Jai Thai building today could prevent the construction of apartments for marginalized women who are currently living.

The landmark application goes deep into this history, which is indeed fascinating; it also notes that residential wards for young women with unwanted pregnancies proliferated across the country during the 1930s and ’40s, before abortion was legal. Preserving a building based on the previously unknown presence of a maternity ward, in other words, would be like preserving a structure because it once housed a patent medicine salesman—a part of medical history, for sure, but one that was common all over the city, the way barre studios and tattoo parlors are today.

Ralston said Thursday that she was “grateful” for the landmarks board’s decision. “We believe the presentation allowed the facts to speak for themselves. The lack of a specific architectural style, the lack of a notable patron, the lack of a celebrated architect, the lack of a documented historic event—these are the criteria by which a historic building should be evaluated, not whether or not one thinks it is charming and adds character to the neighborhood, [which] is completely subjective and open to much debate.”