Tag: Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board

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.”

City Council, Development, Historic Preservation, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz

Council Questions Landmark Protections for Walgreen’s, Woodland Park Encampment Efforts In “Final Phase”

1. On Tuesday, the city council will impose new restrictions on construction or alterations at two historic landmarks: The Center for Wooden Boats in South Lake Union, and an early-20th-century houseboat known as the Wagner Floating Home.

One building that won’t be getting new protections—at least, not yet—is a one-story former bank building near downtown that, for more than a decade, has housed a drive-through Walgreen’s store. Fifteen years ago, the Seattle landmarks board granted landmark status to the building, which has a handsome facade on one side but is otherwise unremarkable. In its “statement of significance,” the landmarks board seemed to struggle to explain why, exactly, the building on Denny Way—one of multiple copies around Seattle of a building designed by a different architect—merited extraordinary protection. Among other points largely unrelated to the 1950 building itself, the board cited the defunct bank’s connection to the city’s logging history and the Denny Regrade, the history of drive-through banking in the US, and the “unprecedented freedom” of mid-century Modernist style.

It doesn’t take much for a building to win landmark status in Seattle; a building is only required to be at least 25 years old and meet one of a list of criteria that includes being “associated in a significant way with a significant aspect of the cultural, political, or economic heritage of the community, city, state or nation” or being characteristic of an area.

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Landmarks status usually leads to limits on the demolition of, or changes to, buildings; the Walgreen’s building is unusual in that 15 years have passed since it first received landmark status. During a meeting of the council’s neighborhoods committee two weeks ago, an attorney with McCullough Hill, representing Walgreen’s, explained that protections would result in profits for the company, which could sell off the development rights for the site. This “transfer of development rights” would allow another developer add density elsewhere while preserving a one-story, car-oriented building in the middle of one of the city’s densest neighborhoods.

Committee chair Tammy Morales decided to delay imposing controls on the building, saying she was “just trying to understand what the benefit for the city is” of protecting the one-story Walgreen’s. We asked a similar question on Twitter. In our highly nonscientific poll, 89 percent opposed protecting the former bank. The committee will take up the landmarks question again at its next meeting on May 14.

2. Woodland Park, which Mayor Bruce Harrell used as the backdrop for his campaign vow to remove troublesome encampments, is still the site of a large encampment, several months after Harrell initially told neighboring residents it would be removed. The delay has allowed the city to use the same deliberate approach that was largely successful in relocating most of the people living at the Ballard Commons, which the city closed and fenced off last December. City Councilmember Dan Strauss and advocates for unsheltered people have been championing this approach, even as sweeps have ramped up dramatically since Harrell took office.

According to outreach workers and advocates who have been working with encampment residents over the past several months, the city has worked effectively to find shelter or temporary housing for several dozen people living at the encampment. As they did at the Commons, outreach workers with the nonprofit REACH and the Human Services Department’s HOPE Team created a list of 61 people living at the encampment in February and began working to move people on that list off site. At the same time, the city’s Parks Department set up portable toilets and started removing trash—two key factors that reduce the amount of visible garbage and human waste, which result when people don’t have places to throw stuff away and relieve themselves.

Data show that between September and March, just 196 of 534 people who received shelter referrals from the HOPE Team actually showed up at shelter within 48 hours and stayed for at least one night—an enrollment rate of less than 37 percent.

The result, according to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, has been “at least 30 referrals to shelter or housing,” including three housing referrals and 26 referrals to enhanced shelter or tiny house villages, in addition to 10 people who have “voluntarily relocated from the park” and are presumably living unsheltered elsewhere.

A spokesman for HSD said outreach “efforts will continue over the coming weeks in an attempt to resolve this encampment through outreach strategies alone.” However, advocates working at the encampment note that unsheltered people have continued to move to the area since February, when the city created its list; as a result, the encampment is scarcely smaller than it was when the city’s outreach efforts began. (The HSD spokesman notes that the city has referred at least five of the new people to shelters).

“We’re seeing people get into at least transitional shelter or tiny houses,” a neighbor who has been doing volunteer outreach at the encampment told PublICola. “We wish there were more staff to do [outreach and placements] and, really, more resources behind it.” Continue reading “Council Questions Landmark Protections for Walgreen’s, Woodland Park Encampment Efforts In “Final Phase”” →

City Council, Development, Historic Preservation, Morning Fizz, Privacy, Tech, Transportation

Former SRO Gets Landmark Status, Council Considers Cell-Phone Tracking Tech

1. Plans to build a 14-story hotel across the street from the north First Avenue entrance to Pike Place Market are now in limbo after the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board voted 6-1 to designate the three-story Hahn Building a historic landmark last week. The board previously rejected applications to landmark the building twice, in 1999 and 2014, and commission staff recommended against a landmark designation this time, “as it does not appear to have the integrity or the ability to convey its significance as required.”

The Hahn Building, which served as a single-room occupancy hotel for low-income workers, was completed in its current, three-story form in 1907, making it one of the older buildings in the area and one of dozens of SROs that used to operate downtown. (The original one-story building was finished in 1897.) One At last week’s landmarks board meeting, landmarking proponents argued that its history and proximity to Pike Place Market qualified it for historic status.

Photographer and writer Jean Sherrard called the building a “vital hinge in the market’s front door” and “a transitional step down from the tall buildings that fill the downtown core behind it.” Landmarks commissioner Jordan Kiel, who cast the lone vote against landmark status, countered that “being landmark-adjacent does not make you a landmark,” calling the heavily altered Hahn a “background” without “a significant impact to the city as an SRO.”

Residents of the Newmark condo tower, which sits directly to the east of the Hahn, have heavily supported the landmark effort, creating an online petition and GoFundMe to support their efforts. If the hotel is built, many of these condo owners would lose their views of Puget Sound to the west. Newmark residents also supported efforts to “save the Showbox,” which sits on the same block and was going to be developed as an even taller condo building.

Landmark status does not prevent a building from being demolished, but it’s one factor that a city hearing examiner will consider when deciding whether to approve a master use permit for the proposed new hotel. The developer can also appeal the landmark’s board decision to the hearing examiner.

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2. Over the next year, the Seattle Department of Transportation plans to replace all its license-plate readers—cameras that track cars and buses through traffic, producing data that SDOT uses to determine real-time travel times and improve things like signal timing—with cell-phone-tracking censors made by a company called Acyclica. The sensors, which will be embedded in utility cabinets along a handful of major arterial streets, track people’s location by identifying a specific code, or address, associated with their cell phones.

Although the city has been using Acyclica’s technology on a smaller scale since 2014, the 2017 surveillance ordinance requires the city to periodically review surveillance technologies for compliance with the ordinance. Last week, the city council’s transportation and utilities committee discussed Acyclica in the context of a city audit on license-plate readers. Several council members brought up concerns about the new technology, including the possibility that it can be used to track individual Seattle residents or by law enforcement. Continue reading “Former SRO Gets Landmark Status, Council Considers Cell-Phone Tracking Tech” →

City Hall, Historic Preservation, Media, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: Showbox Operator Doesn’t Own “The Showbox”; Hair-Touching Times Columnist No Longer Columnist
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Image via HistoryLink Seattle.

1. One wrinkle in the news, which I reported yesterday, that Showbox building owner Roger Forbes has terminated the venue’s lease: Anschutz Entertainment Group, which operates the Showbox, doesn’t own the rights to the name “The Showbox”—Forbes does. (Through an LLC that he controls, Forbes registered the trademark in 2008, and renewed it again last year). That means that Forbes retains the ultimate authority over who gets to use the Showbox name, which is also associated with both the Showbox SoDo (a larger venue on First Ave. South, owned by Lyle Snyder of Mercer Island) and “Showbox Presents,” which promotes shows at other venues, such as McMenamins Crystal Ballroom in Portland.

If Forbes develops the Showbox property before the end of AEG’s lease, in January 2024, the trademark will reportedly revert to AEG. If Forbes retains the trademark and the venue at 1426 First Avenue continues to operate after 2024, it could always revert to one of its previous names, such as the Kerns Music & Jewelry Company; the Talmud Torah Hebrew Academy Bingo Hall; the Happening Teenage Nite Club; or, perhaps its original name: The Show Box.

Anschutz Entertainment Group, which operates the Showbox, doesn’t own the rights to the name “The Showbox”—the building’s owner, Roger Forbes, does.

2. Andres Mantilla, the director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, says the city is not—contrary to what some council members and public commenters suggested yesterday—considering the addition of more properties along First Avenue to the proposed expansion of the Pike Place Market Historical District. Rather, Mantilla says, DON’s consultants (engineering firm AECOM and PR firm Stephenson & Associates) are studying other properties inside the boundaries of the original proposed expansion (which would have also “saved” a strip club, two parking lots, a new hotel, and a Starbucks) “for context.”

“What’s currently on the table is the study of the Showbox,” Mantilla says. “Any expansion on the table right now would be limited to that. There’s overlap with [the] properties” in the original proposed expansion area, but “the analysis is not meant for any sort of particular inclusion of those properties” in the historical district, he says.

That’s news to the Friends of the Market, who assumed the city’s consultants would be looking at other potentially historic properties along First Avenue for possible inclusion in the historic district. Friends of the Market president Kate Krafft, who testified in favor of landmarking the Showbox building at a meeting of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board last night, told me she had expected the city’s consultants to contact the Market to discuss other buildings that might be appropriate for including in the historical district, but hadn’t heard from anyone at the city. (The landmarks board voted unanimously to nominate the structure for landmark status, a process that is separate from the legislation expanding the Market to include the Showbox property. Read all my tweets from the meeting here.)

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“I was under the impression that they were going to have a cultural resource specialist and that they would look at the rationale” for expanding the Market based on the historical properties of each property, Krafft said in an interview yesterday. The Friends of the Market oppose the current zoning on First Avenue, which allows buildings of up to 44 stories, like the one originally planned for the Showbox site. Krafft says historic designation wouldn’t preclude new development—it would just preclude new development that doesn’t fit in with the Market.

“Historic districts evolve,” she said. “Seven new buildings have been built in the district since 1971 and they’re in character with the district.” As for parcels included in the original proposed boundary expansion area that aren’t historic—like the two surface parking lots, or the modern, glass-walled Thompson Hotel on First and Virginia, or the Deja Vu Showgirls strip club—Krafft says they could be considered “non-contributing” properties and grandfathered in. But to do that, she says, “we need a thorough study”—and one does not appear to currently be forthcoming from the city.

3. In the wake of a widely publicized incident in which she asked to touch (and then apparently did touch) the hair of a young African American artist, the Seattle Times’ longtime metro columnist Nicole Brodeur has lost her weekly column and been reassigned to a new role covering “newsmakers” as a general assignment reporter.  Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Times, confirms that Brodeur is now a GA reporter and that her column has been “retired.”

Crosscut and the South Seattle Emerald reported on the hair-touching incident, which the artist, Alexis Taylor, wove into an installation called “Black Among Other Things,” in May. Taylor, Crosscut reported, was “assigned to write a profile on a local journalist for a journalism class” at Seattle University. “She reached out to Brodeur more than a year ago, after the columnist apologized for writing a story about Columbia City that was called racist.” In that column, Brodeur opined that Columbia City had been a dangerous “pass-through” zone until white-owned places like Molly Moon’s, Rudy’s, and Pagliacci moved in. (In a followup column that began, “Sometimes being called a racist is just the jolt you need,” Brodeur interviewed several people of color who are quoted in a way that implies they praised her just for trying to improve).

The Columbia City columns weren’t even the only times Brodeur wrote pieces that could be considered racially insensitive. After a 2010 incident in which security officers stood by and did nothing while an African American girl was beaten in the downtown transit tunnel, Brodeur wrote a column titled “Parents, Get Ahold of Your Kids, lecturing parents of color (“there’s a racial element here that I think needs to be acknowledged”) to “set some rules for decency and public behavior” for their kids and keep them from “running wild.”

On another occasion, she wrote an uncritical single-source column about a pair of First Hill pizza shop owners, the Calozzis,  who claimed to have been victimized repeatedly by deranged, heroin-addled patients at a nearby methodone clinic. Some facts Brodeur failed to mention included the pizza shop owner’s long, colorful, and sometimes violent history of conflicts with neighbors, business rivals, and just random people that included a number of shocking racial incidents. A Vietnamese America neighbor who sued the Calozzis for damaging his property said Jennifer Calozzi called him a “gook,” and the mother of a student who attended school with the Calozzis’ son accused Jennifer Calozzi of going on an N-word-laced  “tirade the likes of which I have never seen nor heard before in my life.”

Times spokeswoman Taylor did not respond directly to a question about whether Brodeur had been demoted due to the hair-touching incident. “It is not uncommon for us to assess the best use of our resources and change focus of the staff,” she said.