Photo of NE Seattle from Roosevelt to Lake Washington, 1959
We’ve spent a lot of time here discussing the Roosevelt upzone and why density is necessary to fully benefit from the infrastructure investment the community is making. This week, the Seattle Times has a feature detailing plans to build two massive housing developments in Black Diamond. Three things really jumped out at me reading the article, and I think they offer interesting insights to Roosevelt upzone discussion. Below the fold.
The first thing is almost a non-point: how incredibly low-density the project is, and how NIMBYism is universal. The plans call for upwards of 6,050 homes and 16,000 residents spread over more than 1,500 acres. At four units per acre, this is the right at the classic exurban sprawl densities categorised by groups like the Sierra Club. Still, residents in Black Diamond are not happy with the level of density of one of the projects:
City Councilmember Craig Goodwin said he voted in favor of the development proposals — even though he thought The Villages’ density of nearly nine homes per residential acre was “poor public policy” — because the projects were consistent with city law.
The second is the amount of infrastructure that needs to be created to accommodate this level of new housing. One Black Diamond resident noted:
“This is creating a city of 20,000 at the end of a two-lane highway that isn’t going to get any wider. There’s no money to improve the highway. Where are the jobs going to come for these people? They’re not going to be here. Traffic’s going to be a nightmare.”
The article goes on to mention increased traffic on SR 169, traffic on the Green Valley Road, and the cost to neighboring communities in Covington and Maple Valley. The article even details that seven new public schools would be built, as well as a large number of big-box retail and light-industry locations developed.
These two points together highlight the real need for serious density near new transportation investments. 348 units near high-capacity transportation corridors is not enough when thousands of units are being built on low-capacity corridors. The low-hanging fruit of prime development near existing infrastructure has been picked. Going forward, the main alternative to new units near new infrastructure is new units in places with inadequate infrastructure, and this is going to continue to bleed funds from already stretched state and county transportation budgets, as once these communities are built, someone is going to need to maintain and expand on their infrastructure.
Finally, the article mentions the Puget Sound Regional Council and the juxtaposition between the long-range plan and what is actually happening.
Vision 2040, a long-range plan adopted in 2008 by the Puget Sound Regional Council, renounced “fully contained communities” separated from cities and recommended that no more than 5 percent of future population growth take place in small cities such as Black Diamond.
It’s too bad the PSRC doesn’t have the teeth to force communities to abide by the long term plan, because it seems precise the opposite of their “Vision” is happening. It may not seem like housing in Roosevelt is a direct replacement for housing in the exurbs, but considering the gradient of densities from rural to super-urban, new housing in one location (be it dense or otherwise) will free housing in other locations. The reason developers want to build 6,050 new housing units in Black Diamond is because they correct surmise that more people will want to live in Puget Sound in the next twenty years. It seems like a disaster from budget (not to mention environmentally) perspective to build huge amounts of housing in areas without infrastructure, only to pass the bill for future projects onto future taxpayers, and to not take full advantage of what infrastructure we are building.
Is there any way we as the state taxpayers who will foot the bill for this mistake can lean on the city of Black Diamond?
“It may not seem like housing in Roosevelt is a direct replacement for housing in the exurbs, but considering the gradient of densities from rural to super-urban, new housing in one location (be it dense or otherwise) will free housing in other locations”
You’re correct, because those are two totally different market segments. Additional units in Roosevelt will be a) stacked flats, no fee simple houses with yards and b) very small units on average, due to the development costs required to build vertically.
I agree that there are much better places to accommodate 3 BD, 2BA small lot single-family than Black Diamond, its not going to be in the middle of Roosevelt. If you made the argument that we should rezone vast swaths of single family for RSL/duplex or townhouse as a substitute for Black Diamond, I might buy that.
Look around your neighborhood – I think you’ll find that many/most of those in the beautiful SF homes with large yards are childless couples. I was one, and would have been happy in denser housing if it wasn’t so expensive. This would have freed up my home for one of these families.
Don’t worry about the details. The units will get filled, and the market will figure out how this happens on its own. And every new person that lives in Seattle is a person that doesn’t live somewhere else in our region like Black Diamond.
New development in Roosevelt is most likely not all stacked flats.
The new lowrise areas will likely be either townhouses or rowhouses – while the lowrise zoning does allow stacked apartment units, it usually offers less square footage (lower FAR) to developers who choose that configuration over a rowhouse setup. LR3 is the exception, allowing apartments a FAR of 2.
The current 40′ zones going up to 65′ is where the apartments will be built, but they could just as easily be offices.
And I will TOTALLY make the argument that we need to rezone vast swaths of SF5000 to LR1&2, and rezone to a minimum of LR3 along every frequent transit route.
I am of the opinion that once existing zoning is maxed out, it’s time to bump up to the next higher density..
Are we talking townhouses like brownstones or with space between?
[bar] Seattle has a shiny-new multi-family code that allows rowhouses (like brownstones) that went into effect two months ago. There’s a summary here, and the DPD page is here. I can’t wait to see Seattle’s implementation of a rowhouse.
We need a massive upzone throughtout Seattle, especially near transit stops, or there will be dozens more Black Diamonds in our future. We have an invisible ceiling over Seattle that our grandparents built to keep Seattle from growing. Well, it worked. But that’s like pinching an inflating balloon – it’ll just grow more where you’re not pinching.
You are going to have to wait for another generation or two to die off before that will even be considered….
Someone here once mentioned that although single family home zoning makes up 80% of the area of Seattle, only about 50% live there. I’d say even if most of the SFH’s are against an upzone, most of the other half would be supportive of this.
Sometime in the past several years, Seattle’s multifamily unit count overtook our single family unit count. However the average household sizes mean single family still has more residents (perhaps 2.5 vs. 1.5). If you figure 145,000 houses and 160,000 multifamily units, that would be 362,000 sf residents and 240,000 mf residents. However, since most kids are presumably in sfs, the number of voters would be much closer. That’s all vague guesswork.
I do think the electorate will change. Of course, it already has quite a bit. Anyone remember the Comp Plan discussions 20 years ago, when many vilified the urban village plan we now take for granted? My sense is that new multifamily gets way less flack than it used to.
Obviously the latest guesses of population were slightly higher…iirc 608,000 for the 4/1/10 census and 611,000 for the 2011 OMB estimate…
One interesting aspect of these numbers is that to get to concensus on growth we need growth. The more units we build, the more people likely to favor dense housing over SF housing since we aren’t going to build any more SF homes. I wonder if there’s a tipping point in cities where they suddenly shoot up in population, and I wonder if this tipping point is simply the number of people ok with urban living.
I think the most important thing we can do is raise the minimum residential zoning to LR1 within all urban village boundaries. I’d also like to expand a minimum of LR1 to pretty much everything north of the ship canal and south of Green Lake.
Our grandparents built our infrastructure, not an invisible ceiling. Seattle is experiencing significant growth, with the population growing from ~480k to ~610k since I was born in 1981. Don’t be a tool. We DO NOT need an massive up-zone throughout Seattle, because:
According to the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, non-single family zones constitute 90% of Seattle’s unused residential development capacity and can accommodate 250% of the expected growth to Seattle from 2004-2024 (Sea Comp Plan: Housing Figure A-16, page H-A20).
What we need is: 1) for Americans to wake the F up and stop the delusional, self-destructive madness; 2) massive investment allover WA State in public transit and non-motorized modes; 3) tax hikes on the elite, corporate profits, oil and automobiles to finance it and everything else; and 4) to ELIMINATE development outside of the urban growth area and near its periphery.
Too bad NONE of that is going to happen. We’re going to burn this mother down. Peace.
“It’s too bad the PSRC doesn’t have the teeth to force communities to abide by the long term plan, because it seems precise the opposite of their “Vision” is happening.”
Agreed. We need a PSRC that has the authority to guide growth into proper areas. Regional governmental councils with teeth do exist. DRCOG (Denver Regional Council of Governments) has developed an impressive strategy for containing growth within existing urban development and around the transit stations being built under the Fastracks regional rail project.
It may be a heavy lift, but reining in exurban development in the Seattle Metro Area is essential.
“It’s too bad the PSRC doesn’t have the teeth to force communities to abide by the long term plan” doesn’t ring true to what PSRC is meant to be, though, does it?
Could PSRC have accomplished what it has, including the Vision 2040 plan, if it had been created with enforcement powers as well? I doubt it. The influence it does have rests its status as a consensus-based planning agency.
Well and it does distribute a good amount of federal transportation dollars… not a ton but not insignificant. What it really needs is stronger and tighter control over the UBG and more control over resource and forest lands. King County is fairly good about it. Pierce county is horrible.
I know several people who would categorize any government attempt to block this kind of development in Black Diamond as an assault on “liberty”. From a fiscal perspective, I believe this is precisely where we want government to intervene: environmental issues aside, the future tax burden generated by this sort of development – along with the negative economic impacts of traffic and exurb development – is the real problem.
What they really mean is an assault on their “right” to make money. Liberty has nothing to do with it.
How dare anyone not embrace what we feel is the only way to live. If people don’t want to live in stacked boxes, cheek and jowl with their neighbors, smelling their cooking, listening to their argument and their music at all hours they should be subject to reeducation camps until they embrace the new density imperative.
Yes, if you build it they will come but that doesn’t mean that you should force it down the current residents throats because you think it is a good thing. in fact density is not a good thing. It is unnatural and results in anger, mental illness, crime and general dislike of the people around you. The studies are there but you have chosen to ignore them. People need space and pilling them one on top of another doesn’t give space.
Bubba, aside from being an anti-density troll, how dare we the taxpayers be required to accept sprawl and waste.
Stating the truth is not trolling. Not agreeing with you or even the majority is not trolling. But that seems to be beyond some. The facts are is that humans are not meant to live in dense environments. mental illness explodes in those environments. That is a fact. Crime explodes in those environments, that is also a fact. As someone who grew up in a dense environment, who lived in apartments most of his life and who now has a single family home, let me say that I am happier now than ever. Your experience may be different. If so I’m happy for you. But trying to social engineering to force people to live in dense environments results in things like Cabrini Green and The Robert Taylor Homes.
At the same time I’ll be happy to admit that density has it’s benefits in terms of diversity and entertainment options, not to mention more public transport but I believe that the refusal to understand the evils of density and the desire to force people to live in a manner that some feel is right, is in fact downright wrong.
People need choices. If you want to live in the U District or on Capitol Hill, that should be your right. If you’d rather live in Bellevue that should be your right as well. But trying to enforce your ideals on others is wrong.
I’ll bite. “People need choices.” Seattle, with it’s 80% area of single family homes, has a population of about 600k. Maybe 300k of those people live in anything close to a dense environment. Our metro region has around 3.3 million. Most of that is artificial sprawl caused by backwards incentives, highway building, and tax breaks. I’d say people have plenty of non-urban choices, and clear-cutting more forest for more sprawl doesn’t deserve to be high on anyone’s priority list for expanding living options. And judging by housing prices, some people would much rather live somewhere dense than these long-commute communities.
Bubba,
High density doesn’t have to mean Cabrini Green. Simply look at say the Upper West and Upper East sides in Manhattan. These are very high density neighborhoods but are hardly unpleasant or hotbeds of crime and poverty.
Perhaps you’re confused….nobody is talking about reducing the number of houses in this region. Those who want them will always have a way to have them.
Except for the houses that will be torn down to build taller buildings on…
Morgan, even then, houses are still being built. Growth management is still pretty loose.
Obviously many, many people live in the conditions which you describe as unnatural. Looking at human history, the suburbs and freeways and cars and basically everything that makes up our built environment is unnatural. Just because you don’t want to live in a densely-built city means just that, not that cities are any more unnatural than 3500sf suburban homes with 1 acre of grass and several SUVs parked out front.
The problem with suburban developments is that despite the regulations in place, the true environmental costs of lots of people living in suburbia isn’t adequately captured. The proposed development in Black Diamond, for instance, doesn’t include any plans to widen I-5 or 167 (which would be impacted), much less the local roads.
I’m okay with people living in the suburbs if that is where they want to live. But the true cost to the region needs to be calculated and added to the cost of the development. I think you’d find if that happened, the suburbs would look much less appealing cost-wise than they do now (cost being one of the major factors driving demand for suburban homes).
Brett,
“The true environmental costs of lots of people living in suburbia” will be hideously exposed in the next decade. China, India, and Indonesia together have ten times the number of people we do. If even a quarter of their societies accumulate enough money to buy even a Tata car gasoline usage will increase by 50% worldwide. Considering how the price careens about when consumption varies by 2% what will 50% mean?
Well, you can be absolutely certain that filling an economy car will cost well north of $100. The developers in Black Diamond are selling snake oil to willing rubes. They face an economic future beyond bleak. The people living in those “unnatural” dense cities will be the only people with disposable income. Suburban commuters will be destitute.
If you want to build up then there is no better place that over the rail lines. The airspace over the BNSF and UP yards could be used to build highrise housing much as they did in Chicago’s south downtown area. Thee could still be working yards underneath the housing. Of course you’d have to take steps to sound proof the housing, build new streets and sewers and so forth but it is doable.
BTW the problem with new development is that the costs, unless subsidized, keeps even middle class people for buying it. When I was looking for a new residence I wanted a condo but none could meet my needs for size and layouts within my ability to pay. I ended up with a house, not because I sought one but because it was cheaper, larger and met my needs. I’m within a half mile of the express bus or a park and ride or the freeway. I have choices. I like that.
[Mike] Then you’d be a perfect advocate for raising or removing zoning in Seattle. Your experience is exactly like many others – there’s not nearly enough dense housing to meet demand, so economics tells us the price must be high. Throughout Seattle’s single family homes – and homes throughout the region – are singles and couples that would be fine with denser housing if they actually saved much money living there.
The idea of communities on train stops is better than nothing. But remember even if people take the train to work they’ll still drive their kids to school, to the mall, to big box stores, to the theater… Without land constraints all of these things will be spread out on large tracks of land far away so they can have enough room for vast parking lots and they’ll have fat roads to attract customers from many other communities. On the contrary, building up in a city brings all of those amenities within a walk or a bus ride.
Turning a wetland, flood plain, or forest into a vast sea of pavement, McMansions, and lawns does have an affect on everyone. It has direct impacts on water quality and wildlife. There are also second order effects in everything from increased expenses for flood control and protection to requiring more driving by those who live there, delivering food from farms further away, or just by those who have to drive a little further when they want to get out into the country.
From a strictly economic point of view unless the developer pays all of the cost of additional infrastructure their proposed 6000 new homes will require then the rest of us are subsidizing the developer.
Someone needs to explain to everyone that the housing market is perhaps the most regulated and subsidized industry out there.
I was in Long Island/New York City all the past week. Staying right near Mike McGinn’s home town of Central Islip (I was in Smithtown).
It’s a amazing that an area which has been developed en masse since I was kid, back in the 60s and 70s still has such a large amount of open space, parks, beaches and low density single family housing. Sure, they’ve added much more commercial sites…many people who used to commute into “The City” on a regular basis are now working on the Island, or better yet, telecommuting from their homes. They may in fact be headquartered anywhere in the country or the world and use the budding West Islip airport to get out.
The whole thing is very now, very 21st century. There are the traditional trunk train lines of the L.I.R.R. but the whole society is built (well) on personal transit. Modern SUVs dart around with the latest built in Bluetooth conveniences…Google Navigate steering them until the autopilot cars come out end of decade.
It’s almost unfathomable why a person such as McGinn who was born into such a paradise wouldn’t want to create the same thing for his current subjects…
Long Island is your paradise? I think anyone would tell you the L.I.R.R. is terrible, doesn’t surprise me that a car remains the best way to get around.
The LIRR is pretty good! It runs frequently and what always on time. The trains are new, clean and have working A/C.
The parking is free to residents at many stations further out.
The best part is that in the past decade NY has done so much on integration.
They completed their AirTrain from JFK and connected it up to both the subway system and the LIRR at Jamacia station. I can do the same with NY Transit to Penn Station to LIRR…which means I can land at either of these, and by rail, get to near many major destinations all the way without someone having to drive to pick me up (only La Guardia seems unintegrated…and the airport I flew into, West Islip via Southwest, was only 10 minutes from my sister…and there’s a shuttle to the LIRR from there).
For example, I would have wanted integration between the airport and Sounder via a nearby station — not by having to travel all the way into Seattle to then backtrack to Kent.
The 180 is a great route and if it were running when I returned at 10pm(it stops at 7:21pm (why?! http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/schedules/s180_0_.html) I would have gone all public transit from my home to the airport as I have done in the past (oh, well there’s also the matter of the 169 shutting down by 11:30pm…still, if I could get a safe transit route back to Kent Station, I would just call a cab for the last 3 miles up East Hill).
The LIRR runs 24 hours a day, and many stations have 15-minute headways all day. Most have 30 minute headways. If that’s terrible, then what do we have?
There is PLENTY of building potential in Seattle. This isn’t central Paris. The reason people build in the exurbs is because its a hell of a lot cheaper. As people have already said, many costs aren’t allocated to exurban users and builders.
Until the costs become comparable, or the premium to live in the city goes way up (for example if gas prices go way, way up) then no matter how high your height limits, it won’t stop exurban development.
Even the single family housing zones could be made three times denser and still be single family housing.
There is currently great demand for city housing of any style. But you’re right – it would be really hard to build in the city at a rate that could absorb all of the new people we’ll get in the next few decades. If we built fast enough at some point demand in the city would drop prices to the cost of building the units. But my guess is that the cost of transportation is going to go up and up, and it will be a very long time of full scale construction in the city until supply for urban housing comes close to demand.
Why should there be a “premium” for living in the city?
It has been losing jobs galore so in fact, many of the traffic problems are caused by people wanting the vanity of living in Ballard and having to snake through narrow road corridors, travel over two bodies of water to get to a job in Redmond!
The more I study transit behavior, the more I think most of the “problems” in this region stem not from rational needs, but from an outdated mindset about how things really are in the year 2011 in Puget Sound. SO many of the people on this blog, for example, ramble on about this or that without having actually ventured more than five miles outside their condo in Belltown.
You can’t make good decisions without good data, but you can’t see the data if you’ve already made up your mind about how it should be, rather than how it really is!!
LOL. Coming from the guy stating that Seattle and the Puget Sound area are depopulating this is rich!
Apartment developers bypass suburbs, target Seattle
According to the Seattle Times, “More than 3,000 apartment units are under construction in Seattle.” Another quote is “The city accounts for 85 percent of all the apartments under construction — and 90 percent of all units in the pipeline — in King and Snohomish counties…”.
Just for history’s sake, the Black Diamond Urban Growth Area (BDUGA) was a political give away by then-County Exec Locke, negotiated by his then-Chief of Staff, Tim Ceis.
It’s an old decision, made by two very likely suspects, that’s coming back to haunt us. It’s also a perfect example of the author’s point, that we need to provide the platform and foundation to serve future populations in centers, where infrastructure and services already exist – even if the cranes don’t get erected for a few decades.
Mandating light rail to these new development areas would be good start.