Appeal filed to stop U District rezone allowing 34-story buildings

As someone who actually lives in the U-District, and has since 2010 (and has worked here for basically the last 10 years), I think I actually have a useful perspective on this issue.

The idea of a tech "incubator" in the U-District was a brainchild of UW President Michael Young. This was the idea behind the re-purposing of Condon Hall. but Condon isn't even being fully used in this capacity, and President Young is now leaving to go to Texas A&M (of all places). Furthermore, if you know what an "incubator" is in this context, (a place for startups to form, usually in some sort of old, cheap building) it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to throw up all-new construction to try to accommodate that, unless you're praying that, say, Amazon moves in.

It's interesting that this proposal is coming out just days after Young's announced departure. The University does own a lot of property in the neighborhood, but the actual utility of building up is mostly for smaller landlords who are already happy making gobs of money drawing rents. It's most immediately going to benefit people who want to cash out.

The idea that the U-District is full of ramshackle and underdeveloped property is gradually becoming outmoded. Tons of new construction has been put up just in the last couple of years, but the idea that this is somehow going to alleviate the cost of rent is false; the new places are just, if not more expensive, than the old housing, and they don't seem to be causing rents to drop elsewhere. They are putting up "luxury student apartments" across from UnSafeway. I can think of two words in that phrase that shouldn't go together.

One other thing to consider is how the U-District is made up. Unlike Belltown, the streets are really quite narrow in the U-District; building large towers would cast much of the neighborhood in semi-permanent darkness. If you want to encourage development, try to stimulate something resembling SLU first. The UW's new dorms along Campus Parkway resemble SLU, partly because of the laws governing development.

The proposal, if realized in its entirety, would pretty much obliterate the U-District. But of course, it's easy to get behind that if you don't actually live there, or don't care about what will happen after you leave. On the other hand, I am not very optimistic that policy can be effected in any meaningful way. Like Belltown, the U-District makes a lot of sheltered people squeamish to even think about visiting, and like Belltown, the population is probably too transient in the neighborhood to make enough people care.

/r/Seattle Thread Link - komonews.com