In June, Mayor Mike McGinn announced a radical zoning proposal for South Lake Union (SLU). In addition to recommendations that will lead to building heights that obstruct views, his proposal will also result in a planned diversion of more of our city’s tax dollars to the region through a tentative agreement with Vulcan Inc., developer and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s real estate firm. Apparently, the well of taxpayer dollars never goes dry when it comes to subsidizing the world’s richest developer.
The mayor’s proposal, the focus of a July 24 public hearing of the city council’s planning, land use and sustainability committee, calls for potential building heights of 400 feet in the southernmost blocks of slu, then “dropping” to 240 feet across the heart of the neighborhood to the Lake Union shore. To achieve such heights, developers would need to create structures that, rising from a “podium” or base of four to six stories, would become thinner as they stretch taller. Mind you, this is now an area with maximum heights of 65 feet to 85 feet, except for a small sliver in the southwest corner of slu rising to 240 feet.
To put these heights into perspective, imagine driving along the freeway just north of downtown. Now, when you look westward, you see snow-dappled mountains, brilliant sunsets and a modest skyline of lower-scale buildings. Only the Space Needle rises above the cityscape.
If the mayor’s recommendations go into effect, several thousand residents living on the west slope of Capitol Hill can say goodbye to those views. Instead, they would face a wall of buildings revealing maybe a third of the Space Needle. And residents as far north as Wallingford could find their stunning views of Mount Rainier to the south threatened, too.
Much fuss is made in the proposal over a developer’s option to either pay into a city affordable housing fund or incorporate affordable units directly into a project. Spread out over the life of these high-rises, however, the cost to a developer would be miniscule — especially considering the lucrative returns that accompany increased densities. A developer could also choose to offer affordable units to renters who earn at least 80 percent of median income, rather than serving low- income renters.
These proposals are just governmental slight of hand to please Paul Allen. Under current zoning, residential growth for the designated SLU urban center is on track to meet its 20-year growth targets. So these zoning proposals push any development and jobs that could benefit downtown north into SLU. A healthy slu receives more while a needy downtown loses out.
New zoning would also shift the emphasis away from biotech to residential and office development. It’s another signal that the plan of turning slu into the biotech center of the universe has largely failed. For the last 10 years, growth in SLU has been mainly due to Amazon. Allentown has become Amazonia.
Under the mayor’s proposal, developers would be required to provide some funding for open space to achieve the maximum heights. But there’s a catch: The developers’ contributions would go to King County to help preserve farmland and forests. It’s called transfer of development rights (TDR). That means TDR funds wouldn’t purchase or save green spaces and tree canopy in Seattle. On the contrary, this program encourages even more of the density and development that’s already wiping out the city’s green space and urban forest.
Worst of all, when a developer pays into the TDR fund, a new state law allows the city to divert property-tax dollars normally destined for the city’s and county’s general funds to cover still more infrastructure improvements serving the Allen/Vulcan agenda. It’s called lclip, for Landscape Conservation and Local Infrastructure Plan. The mayor estimates LCLIP may divert $27 million to $29 million in taxes into unnamed projects in SLU. That’s on top of some $800 million we’ve already spent on that one neighborhood. What’s a few million more?
Of course, there’s still time to tell city council’s planning and land use committee what you think: It will hold another public hearing on the recommendations, though, as of press time, no date had been set.
To us, this package of proposals is one more example of McGinn catering to special interests. We suspect he knows his reelection chances are slim, and he’s hoping to solidify support from development interests, especially Vulcan. But giveaways like this only alienate the average voter, further ensuring he goes down in 2013. We can hardly wait.