Every city wrestles with the tension between preservation and evolution, the tricky balance between saving great old buildings and not freezing neighborhoods in amber. The tension is especially acute in any metro area that lacks enough homes for all the people who want to live there. Historic preservation, when it interferes with homebuilding, can worsen a city’s shortage of homes, driving up rents and pushing out low-income residents.
Case in point: last year a Seattle historic preservation board rejected a proposed 200-unit apartment building because it was taller than the nearby historic buildings—even though local zoning allowed that height. So the site remained a parking garage, and Seattle lost 200 new homes adjacent to the region’s biggest transit hub.
Preserving a community’s historic heritage is a worthy pursuit—a legitimate purpose of public policy that can yield a wide range of benefits.
But overzealous or misplaced preservation has real costs. Who pays when a capricious preservation ruling sacrifices 200 homes? The developers? They just move on: failed projects are built into their business model. The 200 well-off households that would have rented those shiny new apartments? They just compete for other homes in the city in bidding wars that their flush bank accounts ensure they win. But then that sequential process of outbidding steps down the housing market to lower and lower cost homes until the poorest families are left with nothing they can afford. When historic preservation cuts into home production, the people who pay most dearly are those with the least housing security.
Previously I described how design review and environmental review, while well-intended, can sabotage homebuilding and affordability. The same goes for historic preservation rules—especially in booming cities like Seattle where growing pains put historic preservation programs increasingly at risk of being hijacked by people whose true motive is not preservation but to stop change. It’s a problem across the United States, as summarized in this recent article in Environmental Law Review:
Gradually, one building or neighborhood at a time, local governments have blocked new construction in vast portions of major American cities, even as housing prices skyrocket and sites worthy of landmark status become increasingly rare.
If cities aren’t careful, their historic preservation regulations can function as exclusionary zoning.
Seattle’s historic preservation efforts, because they are treated in isolation, risk undermining affordability. But there are ways to fix this. In the near term, Seattle can make multiple tweaks to its existing preservation programs to avoid subverting its housing goals. The ideal, longer-term fix entails establishing a housing “budget”: every preservation ruling that causes a number of homes not to be built would require an offsetting change in zoning elsewhere in the same neighborhood to allow construction of the same number of new homes. In this way, historic preservation would operate under the principle of no net loss of homes.
Seattle’s historic preservation programs
The many benefits of historic preservation include economic development, civic identity, aesthetics, tourism, education, and environmental sustainability. Seattle has two flavors of preservation: historic landmarks and historic districts. For historic landmarks, an 11-member volunteer board can grant landmark status to any object—usually a building—that’s more than 25 years old and has “significant character, interest or value as part of the development, heritage or cultural characteristics of the city, state, or nation.” The nomination process is wide open: any person can nominate any building at any time. Seattle currently has more than 350 designated historic landmarks.
Once it designates a structure, the landmarks board establishes site-specific restrictions on alterations to it. The owner can appeal these restrictions, sending the case to a city hearing examiner who can adjust the requirements but cannot reverse the landmark designation itself. The owner can also appeal the hearing examiner’s decision to the city council, which has final authority.
For any construction project that involves a designated landmark, the builders must obtain a special “certificate of approval” from the board by demonstrating how the project will adhere to the landmark’s restrictions. Though the restrictions vary depending on the characteristics of the landmarked building, they almost always reduce the amount, and increase the cost, of new housing that can be built; in many cases landmark status precludes any new homes at all.
Seattle’s landmarks program also provides—albeit unintentionally—a means for people to obstruct proposed homebuilding projects by nominating buildings that need to be demolished to make way for new homes. The ensuing review process introduces expense, delay, and uncertainty that can push development projects from in the black to in the red even if the board ultimately votes to not protect the structure. A board decision to designate can kill proposed projects outright. To eliminate that malignant uncertainty, many savvy Seattle property owners take the bull by the horns: they apply for landmarks status before putting a redevelopment property up for sale, anticipating that the board will reject the proposal.
Seattle’s historic districts
Seattle has eight historic districts authorized by the city council at the request of residents and business owners. For each district, a volunteer citizen board regulates the appearance and historical integrity of structures and public spaces. Those who wish to build within historic districts must obtain a certificate of approval from the district’s board in a process that typically involves several meetings and may stretch out over six months to a year. Compared to individual landmark designations, historic districts tend to create even greater uncertainty around proposed homebuilding projects because there are no site-specific, pre-established restrictions to guide what will or won’t win the approval of the board.
Seattle’s two largest historic districts are Pioneer Square and the International District, located next to each other in the south end of downtown. Notwithstanding their prime location surrounding a major transit hub in the region’s biggest job center, neither district has seen much redevelopment, even as new construction has boomed over recent years everywhere else in Seattle. Homebuilders know they face a permitting minefield in these districts, so they seek opportunities elsewhere.
Complicating matters, old buildings in Seattle are commonly constructed of unreinforced masonry that can collapse in a major earthquake. The seismic retrofitting necessary to make these death traps safe against earthquakes is prohibitively expensive for most owners. Historic protections on such buildings often serve to put them in a sort of purgatory: old and deteriorating, they remain safety hazards because the owner can’t afford retrofitting but isn’t allowed to alter or demolish the buildings.
Clashes between historic landmarks and homebuilding
Below are some recent examples of Seattle’s historic landmark rules colliding with the city’s dire need for more homes.
- Wayne Apartments: In 2015, Wood Partners proposed a 124-unit apartment on the downtown site of the dilapidated Wayne Apartments, three rowhouses constructed nearly 130 years ago and then raised in 1911 to sit on top of a one-story unreinforced masonry commercial building (see photo at the top of the article). The Wayne’s owner nominated it for landmark status, presumably because Wood Partners would not purchase the parcel without it first being rejected by the landmarks board. Locals upset about the potential loss of popular neighborhood hangouts on the block advocated for landmark status, and the board agreed in a 6 to 3 vote. So ended any plans to build 124 new homes. Also, residents of the Wayne will continue to live on top of a building likely to collapse in Seattle’s next big earthquake.
- Mama’s Mexican Kitchen: In 2015, Vancouver, BC-based Minglian Realty purchased a 1924 single-story, brick commercial building from the owner who also operated Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, a long-time local favorite located in the building. Minglian began planning an 8-story, 63-unit apartment and nominated the building to the landmarks board, presumably expecting the board to deny the nomination. Neighbors mobilized to support the designation, primarily motivated by the cultural significance of the restaurant. Even though the preservation expert who prepared a comprehensive report concluded that the building “didn’t rise to the level of landmark status,” the board voted unanimously to protect it. Minglian has not announced any plans to pursue a project that somehow integrates the existing building, so that’s 63 new homes gone, for now, at least.
The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board landmarked the Mama’s Mexican Kitchen building, halting plans to build a 63-unit apartment unless the developer can find a way to feasibly incorporate the existing building into new construction. Image by Dan Bertolet.
- Federal Reserve Bank: In 2013, a group of preservationists succeeded in getting the 1950 Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Seattle placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2015, developer Martin Selig paid $16 million for the property and proposed adding a 44-story tower with office space and 192 residential units on top of the existing building. The Landmarks Preservation Board’s Architectural Review Committee demanded a much shorter tower. The developer redesigned the project with just seven stories of office space and no housing. The board’s opinion that shortening the modern glass tower atop the original building would preserve its historic value cost the city 192 homes.
The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board ruled that a proposed 44-story addition above the landmarked Federal Reserve building had to be reduced to seven stories. Image by Perkins Will, public domain from City of Seattle.
- Maritime Building: In 2015, Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners launched plans to renovate a 106-year-old 5-story commercial building and add office space and 114 apartments on eight new floors on top of it. About a year later the landmarks board gave it landmark status. Here again, Beacon nominated the building, presumably expecting that it would not warrant designation. Responding to negative feedback from the board on the original design, Beacon reduced the addition to just three floors of office space, with no housing at all: 114 homes lost.
To satisfy the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, the proposed addition to the landmarked Maritime Building was reduced from eight to three stories. Image by NBBJ, public domain from City of Seattle.
- South Lake Union hotel: (This example concerns a hotel but I include it here because it could just as easily have been apartments—hotel and apartment developments commonly compete for the same land.) In 2016, GEM Real Estate Partners bought a property occupied by a 97-year-old, 3-story commercial building and began plans to replace it with a new 7-story hotel. Hoping to eliminate the risk of the building being landmarked, they nominated it, but unexpectedly, the board voted to landmark it. The photo below illustrates why the designation decision was unexpected: though old, the building is run-of-the-mill.
The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board recently voted to give landmark status to this run-of-the-mill building, derailing a proposed hotel redevelopment on the site. Image by Dan Bertolet.
- SPUD’s: In 2017, Blueprint Capital began planning a 4-story, 60-unit apartment building on a site occupied by Spud’s, a local fish and chips chain. Blueprint worked with Spud’s to incorporate a space for the restaurant in the new building, including some of the original signage. Upon hearing that Historic Seattle might advocate for granting the building landmark status, Blueprint nominated the building itself, hoping to put the issue to rest. As shown in the photo below, it’s an unusual, quirky little building. But is it worth saving at the cost of 60 new homes? Blueprint will have to wait for a board of volunteers to decide the fate of the project.
The site of a proposed 60-unit apartment development, the Spud’s building has been nominated for landmark designation. Image by The Johnson Partnership, public domain from City of Seattle.
- Eldridge Tire: In March 2017, the board granted landmark status to the 1925 Eldridge Tire building, a site that Seattle Central College had targeted for non-profit affordable housing development in a land swap negotiation with Sound Transit. In November that deal was finalized, and Capitol Hill Housing plans to build 78 apartments for families earning up to 60 percent of the area median income. In this case, public funds will likely be diverted from paying for subsidized homes to paying for preserving the landmarked building and incorporating into the new construction.
The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted to give landmark status to the Eldridge Tire Building, located along the front edge of the future site of a subsidized apartment building. Image by The Johnson Partnership, public domain from City of Seattle.
- Talaris Campus: In 2012, a Maryland-based firm purchased the 18-acre Talaris campus—a private park and conference center located in Seattle’s exclusive Laurelhurst neighborhood—and proposed constructing up to 333 homes on the site. Fierce neighborhood opposition ensued, led by the Laurelhurst Community Club. The owner failed to obtain the rezone necessary to build multifamily homes, and then in 2013, neighbors succeeded in getting the city to grant landmark status to the site, including the landscape. The owner explored options for building as many as 72 single-family homes, and then in 2017, put the property up for sale. Even single-family homes would be better than no housing on such a large site inside city limits, but it remains to be seen whether any potential buyer will figure out a way to profitably build on a site so encumbered by landmark status.
- Bonney-Watson Funeral Home: In 2017, developers were compelled to go through the motions and nominate this drab, unremarkable building for landmark status with the expectation that the board would give the thumbs down, which it did, unanimously. One board member commented, “I’m glad I’m alive and I didn’t have a service there,” underscoring the ridiculousness of the nomination and the dysfunction of the process that causes such a waste of everyone’s time and money.
Clashes between historic districts and homebuilding
Perhaps the best recent Seattle illustration of the clash between homebuilding and preservation is the case in the Pioneer Square Historic District mentioned at the outset: In 2014 developer Gerding Edlen proposed a 12-story 200-unit apartment building on a site occupied by a parking garage. Even though the building’s size conformed to the zoning rules, members of the Pioneer Square Preservation Board rejected the design, in brief, because they felt it was too big for the neighborhood. In an unusual move, the director of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods overruled the board’s decision. Neighborhood residents then appealed, and the city hearing examiner upheld the board’s original rejection of the project, writing that the proposed building “would appear so large as to be monumental at this location, dominating attention and drawing the focus away from surrounding and nearby historic buildings.” The property has since been sold to a developer who plans to construct an office building—those 200 homes are gone for good.
This proposed 12-story apartment building that would have replaced a parking garage was rejected by the Pioneer Square Historic Preservation Board even though it would have conformed with the zoning for the site. Image by Weber Thompson and GBD Architects, public domain from City of Seattle.
Three homebuilding projects that are currently winding through the approval process in Pioneer Square further illustrate the friction:
- Grand Central Block, a renovation of three early 20th-century buildings and an addition of four new upper floors with 132 apartments. The new floors of housing would help offset the major expense of seismic retrofitting. Approval of the addition is likely to be contentious: one board member is on the record stating that he was “not in favor of a large massing on top to reach revenue; 100 years of history would be sacrificed.” However, if the board insists on restrictions that render the project an infeasible money loser, the city will lose 132 homes, and in the event of a major earthquake, it may well be human lives that are sacrificed.
The Pioneer Square Preservation Board will decide whether to allow the addition of new floors on top of the Grand Central block buildings. Image by Studio 216, Graham Baba Architects, and Unico, used with permission.
- The Cannery, a 54-unit apartment on the site of a crumbling one-story historic brick building. The board approved the design if the original façade could be preserved, but the owner has stated that the cost of doing so is a deal breaker financially. The site’s unstable soils also jeopardize feasibility, but piling on the façade preservation only makes the equation worse.
The Pioneer Square Preservation Board wants the façade of the crumbling, one-story Cannery building preserved, jeopardizing prospects for a 54-unit apartment on the site. Image by Dan Bertolet.
- Canton Lofts, an 80-unit apartment targeting rents affordable to people earning median income without relying on public subsidy. The developers endeavor to keep the rents lower than typical market rate by squeezing construction costs in every way possible. This project underscores the challenge of balancing priorities: design features desired by the board to help the building fit in better with neighborhood are likely to make it more expensive to construct, compromising the affordability objective.
The impact on housing affordability
The examples cited here add up to over 1,000 homes lost to historic preservation over the past few years. And that doesn’t include homebuilding projects that never got past the idea stage because developers were scared off from the start by the cost, delay, and uncertainty inflicted by the preservation process and restrictions—perhaps another 500 or 1,000 homes?
To put these numbers in perspective, planners project that Seattle’s Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program will yield an average of 600 subsidized homes per year over 10 years. True, any new homes forfeited to preservation would have been market-rate, not subsidized. But when there aren’t enough homes in a city for everyone who wants one, even the loss of relatively expensive market-rate homes ends up squeezing out families on the low end of income spectrum. The housing market is like a huge game of musical chairs. When there’s a housing shortage, the wealthy always get a chair, and the poor end up on the floor—that is, without a home they can afford. Through the market gyrations of competition for scarce housing, every home not built converts to one fewer home available to a poor household—the very people served by affordable housing programs like MHA.
The bottom line: rules for historic preservation can sabotage housing affordability just like any other cost, red tape, permitting delay, or capacity limits imposed on homebuilding.
Who pays the big bill for historic preservation?
Because historic preservation provides a shared public benefit, it’s only fair that the public as a whole should pay for it. But as the above examples reveal, typical preservation rules put the burden on people who happen to own a historic property. Imagine you buy a house with the intention of building an addition for your aging parents. But then unexpectedly the city decides to designate your house a landmark and says you can’t build that addition. You take the hit for historic preservation that benefits the greater community.
That same unfair deal often plays out when Seattle’s landmarks board designates a building. To help offset the loss of property value that a designation can cause, Seattle offers landmark owners zoning and building code exceptions, a special tax valuation program, and transfer of development rights. But for cases in which a designation prevents redevelopment of a property, such compensation is unlikely to come anywhere close to covering the owner’s loss. For unreinforced masonry buildings in particular, preservation mandates can lead to neglect and dilapidation. Historic preservation is inordinately expensive, and cities shouldn’t rely on individual property owners to foot the bill.
Balancing preservation and affordability
Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) recommends reforming the city’s historic review process to reduce permitting delay and uncertainty, but does not offer any specifics for how to accomplish that. Since the HALA plan was released in July 2015, policymakers have not initiated any reform efforts.
One shortcoming of Seattle’s historic review process is that it treats preservation in isolation, ignoring its relationships to other important city goals—notably housing affordability. Self-selection all but guarantees that volunteer board members will elevate historic preservation over other values. And Seattle’s cultural climate of unease over rapid growth only raises the likelihood that boards will overreach. To better balance historic preservation with the city’s affordability efforts, Seattle can:
- Update mission statements to acknowledge that historic preservation can undermine other goals and must be balanced with other city programs.
- Educate board members about how the historic review process and resulting preservation mandates can impede homebuilding and harm affordability (and consider screening out prospective board members who are resistant to such ideas).
- Raise the bar for justifying landmark designations to counteract intensifying anti-development sentiment felt by growing numbers of Seattle residents.
- Move the program from the Department of Neighborhoods to the Department of Construction and Inspections to enable efficiency improvements through integration with other permitting processes such as Design Review.
More effective still, though undoubtedly more controversial, would be to:
- Require owner consent before granting landmark status, as Portland, OR, does.
- Eliminate the volunteer landmark and district boards and instead dedicate city officials to historic preservation decision making—in Vancouver, BC, heritage designations are recommended by Director of Planning and enacted by the city council.
- Prohibit historic preservation restrictions from limiting new construction to less than the height or capacity that zoning allows, including additions to historic structures.
Beyond these relatively straightforward fixes, Seattle can also pursue a deeper overhaul. The ideal program would combine two key ingredients:
- A housing budget under which any homes lost to preservation would have to be offset with corresponding additional allowances for new homes elsewhere in the same neighborhood.
- A method to capture the value of the extra private development enabled by these allowances and use it to fund the preservation of historic buildings.
As it happens, Seattle already has a policy that gets part way there: transfer of development rights (TDR). Landmarked buildings are usually smaller than what zoning permits. TDRs enable owners to sell the rights to that extra development capacity that landmark status precludes them from using. In designated zones throughout the city, developers can buy those development rights and build larger than what the baseline zoning would allow. The TDR proceeds can help owners maintain their landmarked buildings.
In practice, however, Seattle’s TDR program falls short because the market price of the TDRs is too low to cover the typical cost of preserving old buildings—especially those that need seismic retrofitting. There’s a price-squashing glut of TDRs available for sale in Seattle’s program because there aren’t enough development projects that want to buy them, and the city has several types of TDR besides historic—open space or performing arts centers, for example—all competing for that limited pool of TDR buyers. Furthermore, the city has curtailed any future expansion of TDR by tying increases in the building size allowed by zoning—“upzones”—to affordability requirements through the new MHA program.
Putting more people’s skin in the game
So what else could Seattle do to further calm the conflict between preservation and affordability? Localize it with neighborhood housing budgets: If a neighborhood decides that it wants to preserve a building that otherwise could be redeveloped into housing, the city would require upzones to make room for more homes somewhere else in the neighborhood. This upzone would offset the homes sacrificed for preservation, and it would balance the housing budget.
For the second key ingredient—funding—the city could pay the owner of the preserved building the market value of the development capacity that was extracted. Compared to TDR, an immediate payment of the full value of the capacity would provide the owner with compensation more in line with what’s typically needed to keep old buildings in good shape. The city could then reimburse itself by charging builders a fee to use the extra capacity granted through housing budget upzones. (Of course, a zillion details would have to be nailed down before city could launch such a program.)
Vancouver, BC, has a program based on similar principles, though narrower in scope. For projects combining new and old on the same site, Vancouver grants developers extra capacity in the new construction in exchange for preserving the historic building. For historic properties without room for bigger buildings the capacity can be transferred elsewhere in the city.
The beauty of a localized, housing budget approach is that it would stimulate debate among preservation advocates and residents about the tradeoffs. Representatives of residents of the neighborhood could be granted authority to decide where (but not if) to accommodate the compensating increases in zoning capacity. For example, they could choose between allowing a single highrise or a few extra floors on multiple buildings. If neighbors were dead set against adding any more capacity for housing to the neighborhood, the neighborhood would not be able to preserve any additional buildings.
Such debates would also help Seattleites loosen up their rigid conceptions of preservation. Why not hybridize old and new? Why not a sleek steel and glass tower rising among historic brick buildings in a neighborhood like Pioneer Square? Why not a modern, contrasting addition floating atop on old building? Urban places thrive on a healthy mix of new and old, as observers have noted about Denver’s LoDo neighborhood, for example:
Along with its old buildings, new towers have boosted its residential population, creating a neighborhood that feels fresh and alive, rather than stuck in a time warp.
Conclusion
Communities can benefit from historic preservation. But when preservation hinders homebuilding and drives up rents in housing-short cities, those who suffer the most are the low-income people forced to leave their communities in search of cheaper homes.
Seattle’s preservation rules can undermine affordability not only by preventing construction outright, but also by imposing cost, delay, and uncertainty on homebuilding projects. Several modest modifications to Seattle’s existing preservation programs would help create a better balance with the city’s housing goals. To prevent preservation from cutting into home production, over the longer term Seattle can work towards a program incorporating a housing budget that requires upzoning to compensate for homes not built because of historic preservation.
JB
Exponential and unchecked growth isn’t really great for human habitat either. Why don’t we discuss the push to cram ever more people into a finite space? Why pathologize wanting to live with a little breathing room? How about cramming more habitrail towers further out from the city with decent and safe mass transit options?
Sadly though, it looks like Seattle’s existence as a distinctive city is long gone. Incomers are more about the brand name than the reality & history of place.
HR
The question should be character over Affordability for the few. What Seattle and San Francisco have done is not Affordable to the many or those that currently live in those Cities. Its for those that can afford the higher rental rates set by each new developer. Per capita Seattle has the fewest historic districts of any City over 200,000 residents in the Northwest and perhaps any city of age and size in NW. Seattle has chosen its path for good or bad, Historic preservation has lost its effort in that City. Its not too late for other Cities to chose a better path, a more sustainable path for its residents.
Dan Bertolet
HR –
All the new market-rate homes being built in Seattle may be relatively expensive but if they were not built, average rents across the city would be even higher than they are now. The question is character vs. affordability for everyone.
Naziattle Anymore 206 RIP
Freezing a city in amber… That is such an absurd and backward analogy. Nobody and nothing but soulless greed can justify the abject annihilation that parasitic plutocrats and corrupt oligarchs have subjected OUR City to. Forensically obliterating about every local business, structure, plant, view and living being. The genocidal gentrification is NON-STOP, and they specifically target historically and culturally significant and iconic; homes, buildings, trees, businesses and obviously people.
Seattle has the most regressive taxation of ANY city in the US. Most cranes, most billionaires, highest homelessness rate, and highest homeless population trailing only LA and NYC. More died of exposure in Seattle than in Chicago this recent winter when Chicago dropped to -16°. That’s 16 below 0, not 32° freezing. And beyond the historically or culturally relevant and significant structures and landmarks, the culture itself, any and all has been close to completely exterminated. Diversity has been exterminated. Our air quality has plummeted and environmental consideration is absolutely paradoxical. There never was any growth restriction, that is NIMBY propagandist nonsense. All of these articles are clearly written for the outside. Mass transit is garbage, there is no major city that has this limited and useless of mass transit; Broadway and blocks of historical housing, and flourishing, diverse businesses, as well as its being discernible from any other generic department store display they’ve turned everywhere else into, FOR this ridiculous LINK which is supposed to be the Pinnacle of efficiency we were promised, catastrophic delay after delay. After years upon years of locals being duped, screwed and juiced for all of the money, and destroying the bus tunnel, viaduct, Mercer tunnel, etc., etc… It like everything else that is supposedly lacking or restricted by Seattle having a skyline, or culture, or diversity, or an identity, or local/native anything…is just a premium class exclusionist profiteering scheme. And if you are from here, and stubborn enough to suffer through living here; none of the preaching to the predatory capitalist choir and SeattElites will fool anybody. All things local, authentic, natural, historic, iconic, sacred…are replaced with IKEA sky(sc)raper excrescences, fake estate, pollution, AstroTurf, and artificial everything, imported everything, empty everything. You shills always pretend there was ever let alone still something preventing people from moving or living here, or navigating here, or jobs, or fairness. But in reality, YOU and all of your selfish OccupIED Seattle corporate colonists and gentrificutioners have massacred these opportunities for anybody but rich, greedy, pathologically possessive opportunists. Why would anybody move TO $eattle!? First of all, who CAN? And to all of those who you’ve exiled and banished; if there is some position that hasn’t been outsourced, eliminated, automated, etc., it’s been made intentionally impossible to get here, or get home from that job.
You are the amber, you are the complete restriction of hope, mobility, opportunity, diversity, identity or homes. Everything is a scheme. The most booming areas are construction pits. Turned a major metropolitan city into the shiniest slim, the inner city has never been so gated. It’s a country club for the elite, and a graveyard or minefield for anybody else. All of the legislation you cite is only used by and for the poverty profiteers, and the corrupt oligarchy/oligopoly that stole Seattle. Try as a group of locals to protest the abrupt, coincidental decision to cut down neighborhood defining 200 year old trees that became a nuisance as soon as some robber baron bought the block they were on. Try to protect anything that fits these legal parameters in the easy-peazy manner you and the law describe. Try to seek penalties for egregious violators of these “impeding” codes. Parking garages or lots are “saved” because they are part of a con (of which they all are). They will refuse subsidized housing perhaps on their “historical grounds” loophole, but it isn’t done to preserve anything but corruption, and profit. I recall an entire block that was nothing but unique, sacred, active, historical buildings, homes (where people I know were ousted from, and that hasn’t stopped), thriving businesses including the original Cha Cha and Kincoras, in the heart and soul of Pine St; razed for a massive, flat, paid parking lot in their place. It stayed a pointless desecrative un-memorial until they built some generic, luxury hives over that about 10 years later. Talk to anybody who has actually done or tried what you imply is possible and some sort of hinderance.
Historical preservation driving up rent or exiling demographics!!? That’s only when the buildings they have structurally preserved (so far) forced all inhabitants out of their homes and apartments to serve as empty possessions, placeholders for the next structural abomination replacement, or just placeholders to keep life and property exclusive and value artificially high, OR replace the expulsed local inhabitants with the shiny new gentrifacist occupiers.
Look at the last head of the “historical preservation” racket bureau who dared suggest that perhaps some of Seattle should ACTUALLY be preserved. Durkan who has played a huge role in the theft of Seattle from the beginning fired her immediately and replaced her with Nichols’ guy, who is like Pac Man when it comes to anything native, local, historical, diverse, natural…Andres Mantilla.
You turned Seattle into North Korea.
Stop acting like there’s anything normal, natural, or conventional about the actual genocidal, democidal, ecocidal, classicidal and sociocidal toll in this rampaging conquest of klepto-plutocratic aristocracy. There is a massive bodycount and immeasurable suffering, and it continues to rise as do the empty hives. Literal massive deathtoll for designer shell company storage that people die of exposure outside of. People who used to live indoors until the billionaire blitzkrieg. There were more than two classes. Every reason to move to Seattle whether in person, or by proxy is nefarious. No view, no air, no distinction, no culture, nightlife, diversity, landmarks. Only vampirism and blood luxury. AFFORDABLE housing crisis, not the recently abbreviated housing crisis. Stop with your insidious justifications and pontificating rants. scAmazon Fever is and has been more deadly and ruinous than COVID. Paul Allen is taxing the underclass for the heating bill from hell. By the way, the elite class (the other class, the colonist class are still growing wealthier, and the lower income class are becoming more impoverished. Refer to the actual intensive, extensive studies that have actually unequivocally proven beyond any illusory correlation or bias, not Swindlers’ List billionaire birthright propagandist blogs oozing with entitlement. You could only buy these ridiculous rants if you were desperate to, or afford to. Shame on you. 206 RIP
I apologize for replying to JB in particular, there’s no comment button at the end of the “article”, and this comment is at the top.{“
Dean Anast
The author perhaps adds a cleverly disingenuous twist to the rationalization of development, oozing faux championship of housing needs that masks the true agenda: a method to annihilate architectural history, usually perpetrated by rapacious developers out for a profit who care neither for history nor those with housing needs — native culture be damned. Burying the visual past and character of a city is like throwing paint on Van Gogh’s Café Terrace At Night.
Dan Bertolet
Dean –
My point is that there’s a balance. Do you believe that the visual past and character provided by preserving the Wayne apartments shown at the top of the article is worth pushing 124 low-income households out of Seattle?
Dean Anast
Dan,
Sorry but I have to be a Bolshevik here. With the rapacious greed that has evolved to such a point of manic obsession with development in Seattle, a line must legally be drawn otherwise cultural boundaries will be totally ignored. Yes, the Wayne is an eyesore but the 124 families can be accommodated in other local housing. Look at San Francisco. I have no knowledge of their policies on this subject but they are not committing historical architectural genocide.
Nathanael
Indeed, look at San Francisco. The highest housing prices in the ENTIRE WORLD, exceeding New York, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, London, etc.
NOBODY can afford to live in San Francisco unless they inherited a house subject to California’s bizarre Proposition 13 ultra-low-property-tax rules, or inherited a rent-controlled apartment. The population of San Francisco has become an *inherited aristocracy*, with only billionaires being able to afford to move in. The working class has to live on the other side of the Bay!
You aren’t a Bolshevik. You’re a Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” type. Please wake up to realit!
Joe Davenport
What type of housing is the author talking about? How about a place where a UW custodian could find at least two bedrooms for her and the kids and NOT exceed the magic 1/3 of income? If she were at the very top of her pay scale that would @1,100 a month. You start building housing for people like her, and we can have a talk about preservation. We need LOTS of in town easy access screw the market rate AFFORDABLE housing for people like her, like the medical assistants and techs at the hospitals the kitchen staffs, laundry workers etc.
Dan Bertolet
Joe –
Yes, Seattle needs a lot more subsidized housing for low-income families. The problem is, it’s very expensive to produce and operate. How do you propose we pay for it?
Rick Rybeck
A very thoughtful and well-reasoned article. An additional policy reform that would help would be to reduce or eliminate the counter-productive property tax applied to privately-created building values. This makes it more expensive to construct, improve and maintain buildings. Unlike a sales tax (that is paid only once), the property tax on buildings is applied each and every year that an improvement adds value to a property. Thus, the economic impact of a 1% or 2% property tax on a long-lived asset in a low-inflation environment could be equivalent to a 10% to 20% sales tax on construction labor and materials. That’s a huge barrier to affordability.
Some jurisdictions have remedied this situation by reducing the tax rate applied to privately-created building values while increasing the rate applied to publicly-created land values. The lower rate applied to buildings makes them cheaper to build, improve and maintain. This is good for residents and businesses alike and leads to higher employment. Surprisingly, the higher rate applied to land helps keep land prices more affordable as well by reducing the profitability of land speculation.
For more info, see “Want More Affordable Housing? Look to the Land” at http://solidgroundcampaign.org/blog/want-affordable-housing-look-land
Dan Bertolet
Rick –
Agreed, and we at Sightline are big fans of land value taxes!
http://www.sightline.org/series/love-for-land-value-taxes/
Allyson Brooks
As the Director of the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation I am rather disturbed by the amount of misinformation in this article. The notion that historic districts are an obstruction to residential housing is completely negated by the fact that Pioneer Square and the International District are some of the most densely residential areas in the downtown. The existing buildings provide important affordable housing and they exist in a rich cultural setting.
Many of the examples the author gives were NEVER intended to be affordable housing. Certainly the tower over the Federal Reserve Bank was always going to be market rate and was mostly intended as business offices. We worked closely with Martin Selig as he developed proposals for the building. One major reason the tower proposal didn’t go forward was that the cost to stabilize the foundation became a major factor in rendering the high rise proposal economically unfeasible. Selig is now putting a tower on the former Firestone building at the corner of Harrison and Westlake. This is slated for commercial.
The discussion of Pioneer Square is wrong as well. The garage in question is a non-contributing building in the District. It can be replaced with a new building but the proposal referenced by the author was to build a structure that was out of size and scale for the historic district. It was intended to be luxury housing units, never intended as affordable housing. Meanwhile, the new Weyerhaeuser Building was allowed because it met infill standards. We now have a new proposal for the garage that is being assessed. The Grand Central building example is also wrong as there are no final decisions on the design.
The whole premise of the article that historic preservation is somehow an obstacle to economic development, affordable and low income housing is an oversimplification. A large number of historic rehabilitation projects are residential and provide stable affordable housing. It is too bad the author didn’t contact our agency to get his facts straight. #fakenews
Dan Bertolet
Thanks for your feedback, Allyson.
If the main reason that Selig reduced the tower height so much was structural, then I stand corrected. I was referencing Mark Stiles in the Puget Sound Business Journal, who reported:
“The decision to greatly reduce the size of the addition came at the request of the city Landmarks Preservation Board’s Architectural Review Committee, which felt the high-rise would overwhelm the landmark building.”
Do you think the Landmarks Board would have approved the original tall tower if it was financially feasible and Selig wanted to build it? Relatedly, what I found when trying to get info from developers for this article is that they were hesitant to say anything for fear of instigating backlash from the Boards that could jeopardize approval of their projects — which in itself is evidence of a problem with programs.
Regarding your comments overall, you seem to have missed the distinction between citywide “housing affordability” (as in the title of the article), and subsidized affordable housing. I realize that the lost units I tallied would have been market rate. But I am considering the effect on the citywide housing market, in which the root cause of rising prices and displacement is a shortage of housing, as explained in previous Sightline articles and our 2-minute animation (links given in article). When market-rate units don’t get built, more low-income households get displaced.
Regarding density in Pioneer Square and the C/ID, a quick google search reveals that Pioneer Square’s density is relatively low:
https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/Washington/Seattle/Pioneer-Square/Population
Also, increasing density in Pioneer Square has been a city goal for many years:
http://timothyburgess.typepad.com/tim_burgess_city_view_/2011/04/pioneer-square-density-everyone-agrees.html
Yes, there are lots of older buildings with relatively low rents in Pioneer Square and the C/ID, but many of them are unreinforced masonry death traps — not an ideal affordable housing solution, in my view.
Regarding the proposed Gerding Edlen building, its size would have been allowed by the city’s zoning. What “infill standards” are you referring to? The latest proposal for the site is not housing – that means fewer homes in the city and higher average rents citywide.
Regarding the Grand Central project, the article describes the conflict between restricting the addition and the cost of retrofitting. What exactly did I get “wrong”?
Regarding all the other examples given, do you think they reveal any possible room for improvement in Seattle’s historic preservation progams, or are they all just fine as is?
Allyson Brooks
There is always room for improvement. I don’t believe any program needs to stay static. But I was concerned that the examples used to make the argument were rather unfair. Most of the examples were not going to turn into affordable housing but market rate housing..and actually not even that..luxury condos or commercial for offices. I think affordable housing and historic preservation can actually go hand in hand. Also, we talk about affordable housing but we really need to talk about low income housing which is not the same thing. The loss of the historic Single Residential Occupancy structures, have left people on the street. The bigger question isn’t that historic preservation affects housing..but how do you entice developers such as Selig, Daniels and big real estate companies to invest in affordable and low income housing when the money is in high end residential and commercial? In fact, we in historic preservation are having a very difficult time promoting rehabilitation of historic buildings in a such a lucrative market for apartments and commercial. Remember, under the Seattle rules if a developer can demonstrate “economic hardship” they can demolish and build new. Being landmarked doesn’t necessarily stop projects. Thank you for responding to my angst about your article. May you and all your readers have a terrific 2018!
Dan Bertolet
What you point out gets at the heart of the matter, I think: rehabilitation of historic buildings is really expensive. So in many cases we shouldn’t expect the private market to be able to pay for it. But then of course the problem is that public funds are hard to come by, and we have lots of other public needs suffering from lack of funding too, not least, subsidies for low-income housing.
Agreed about the importance of SROs:
http://www.sightline.org/2012/11/14/rooming-houses-historys-affordable-quarters/
Ethan Melone
While I agree that preservation regulations and procedures in Seattle could be streamlined and rationalized, I think there are several flaws in this analysis of the impacts of the current system on the housing market. For example:
-In the Chinatown-International District, the ownership structure of many of the buildings has been the key obstacle to redevelopment/re-use. They are owned by family trusts that are not interested in investing in the properties. It is not clear that the preservation district is the major inhibitor to redevelopment.
-Landmark designation does not in and of itself prohibit demolition of a landmarked structure; the key step is the imposition of incentives and controls, which is to some extent negotiated with the owner. The controls can be limited to the façade, or even to photo documentation. Your reporting seemed to stop at the designation stage which does not tell us much about how the designation would impact the development proposals.
-I question the microeconomic analysis. For example, if the SPUD’s Fish & Chips building is preserved, does that really reduce the amount of housing the market will supply in the Green Lake neighborhood by 60 units, or will those units be developed on other sites that are slightly less desirable to the development community? Probably the latter; it was the demand for housing in the neighborhood, not just the economics of the SPUD’s site, that created an incentive for the developers. Taking the SPUD’s site “off the market” represents an incremental tightening of the market (increasing land prices), but not a 60-unit impact unless SPUD’s was literally the last potential infill site in the neighborhood.
That said, I agree that most of the design and preservation review functions in Seattle should be transferred to professional agency staff, with the volunteer boards shifting to a policy, oversight and review function.
Dan Bertolet
Ethan –
Thanks for your comments.
Agreed that ownership in the C/ID has been a barrier to redevelopment. But the historic district obstacles only make it that much more challenging.
Yes, designation doesn’t always mean that the building must be completely preserved, as I noted in the Mama’s example. But I think in practice just the added risk and uncertainty can often kill a project, e.g. the Wayne apartments.
Regarding Spud’s, the way I see it, there are a limited number of feasible homebuilding sites in any neighborhood, and when you take one away, in the end, the net result will be less housing. See diagram in this article:
http://www.sightline.org/2017/07/24/yes-red-tape-and-fees-do-raise-the-price-of-housing/
Nathanael
What is your *problem* with market-rate housing?
More market-rate housing is essential!
In San Francisco, a near-total prohibition on the construction of new market-rate housing has meant that the market rate for housing has gone through the roof. Now, even people earning *$600,000/year* need subsidized “affordable housing” because market-rate housing is so expensive.
Brooke Best
I read this article about the “clash” between historic preservation and housing affordability, scratching my head throughout. It is filled without a lot of misinformation about what preservation is and does, and sets up a false conflict between the two. The article is strongly biased toward increased density to work our way out of this complex problem of providing affordable housing options. Did the author reach out to Historic Seattle or other preservation advocates to get their perspective on the situation and what really is going on with all the highlighted properties?
Additionally, the reference to historic preservation as freezing places/neighborhoods in “amber” is inaccurate. Preservation is all about sparking economic revitalization and reusing/rehabilitating for new uses.
Historic buildings provide naturally-occurring affordable housing. What HALA proposes will do very little to create either LIVABILITY or AFFORDABILITY. Sure, we’ll get more housing, but it will be unaffordable to most, and at the expense of affordable existing properties.
No rules currently governing historic districts prohibit affordable housing or compatible infill development, and there are many examples of affordable housing in historic buildings. Historic Seattle and Bellwether Housing have several excellent examples.
Instead of villifying historic preservation, how about adding it to the mix to help solve our affordability crisis? I agree there should be a balance and there’s so much opportunity that the City could take the lead on.
Dan Bertolet
Brooke –
If you believe I missed things that are going on with the highlighted properties, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
As I stated in the article, historic preservation can bring great value in many ways. I’m focusing on Seattle’s process, and how it can compromise homebuilding, which then exacerbates Seattle’s housing shortage and drives up rents—including naturally occurring affordable housing in older buildings.
What do you think the city could be doing to take advantage of opportunities for historic preservation and affordability?
NOT_A_NIMBY
It’s not that I don’t believe what Dan says, but it’s funny how no matter what the problem, his solution is always about adding density and trying to make things easier on developers.
Maybe the reason we have so many rules to guide development is that that industry is aesthetically and civically bankrupt and does all it can to bend the rules in its favor. People are fed up with development that has no consideration for the character of the neighborhood (and in many cases is just plain ugly), and are looking for some way to make developers respect that. Some of these examples in this article seem to reflect a backlash – because so many buildings have already been lost, people fight fiercely to preserve something – even if that something is not the most beautiful or historic example. I for one am very glad that that block in Belltown is not going away yet…that stretch of local businesses is a defining feature of the neighborhood, and it will be gone for good if it ever gets redeveloped. One unintended consequence of upzoning in urban villages was that we zoned out some of our most recognizable neighborhood commercial districts. It’s not just affordable housing we need, it’s affordable commercial space.
I also noticed that several of the examples in this article seemed inaccurate, and hope that future articles do more deeper digging and more conversations with other experts about how these “conflicting” goals can work together to preserve neighborhood character and add affordable housing. I’m disappointed that what passes for “dialogue” (not just from Dan, but in many sources) around affordable housing and zoning issues lacks nuance and an understanding that aesthetics do actually matter.
Dan Bertolet
NOT_A_NIMBY –
Exactly what in the examples do believe is inaccurate? Other commenters have made similar insinuations without details (except for the Federal Reserve example, for which I quoted my source). If there are real errors, I’d like to know.
Good point about commercial spaces. Do you know of any good models for how to preserve them? Melrose Market is a beautifully done rehab but I don’t think those spaces are especially affordable.
In my experience, most people understand that aesthetics matter, but what is far less commonly understood is that attempts to regulate aesthetics usually fail, and also tend to have unintended consequences, e.g. on affordability.
Regarding “making it easier on developers,” well, yes, I’m afraid that I’m guilty of believing that if we make housing less expensive to produce, then housing will be less expensive. It seems to me that as long as we continue to cast homebuilders as the enemy we’ll never win on housing affordability.
Central Districtite
This strategy is being used to limit new development next to the mt baker light rail station: https://towncenterfriends.org/2017/08/28/historic-mount-baker-park-neighborhood-national-register-of-historic-places/
Tyler
I’m okay with preserving existing mixed-use multifamily buildings like the Wayne Apartments when there are still so many surface parking lots in Seattle, along with single family >5000sqft lots and disused single story commercial buildings.
Dan Bertolet
Tyler –
Assembling the parcels for an apartment project is one of the most difficult parts of the process. The fact that the developers were pursuing a project that included the Wayne apartments indicates that it was the best opportunity for land that they could find. Remove that opportunity, and the next best choice for a site will inevitably be more costly, and that means more expensive housing.
poncho
I am a big fan of Sightline, Dan Bertolet and upzoning but I also feel there needs to be greater emphasis on preservation in Seattle. Lets infill all-day the vacant lots, parking lots, and the non-descript non-contributing buildings but leave the few contributing buildings and historic districts alone. Historic buildings are what make neighborhoods great, desirable places that people want to live, work, eat/drink, shop in. Quirky Wayne Apartments gives Belltown its desirable character along with the other historic buildings. New buildings with rare exception are pure s*** in this town and literally destroy everything that makes Seattle a desirable place. Its either cheap developer-driven spend-not-a-penny-more-than-needed or flashy all-glass monuments to an architect’s ego. Walk around the Denny Triangle, its all new buildings, barely a single historic building and is a truely horrible sterile lifeless place, even at full build out itll be awful littered with characterless and placeless metal and glass boxes. Meanwhile all the great historic parts of Capitol Hill are getting destroyed by new cardboard box maximize-the-building-envelope garbage.
Nathanael
You want to know why so many new buildings are junk? It’s the damn zoning code.
http://seattleurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/10/townhouses-part-2-problem.html
Repeal your garbage zoning code, with its setbacks and parking requirements, and you’ll have the opportunity to get nice new buildings. The parking is currently REQUIRED BY ZONING — if you want to get rid of those parking lots, change the zoning.
Nathanael
The money quote from that article (after lots of detailed citations):
“When the zoning code restrictions force us into an awkward configuration with little or no flexibility, you get a lot of whatever the zoning code restrictions stipulate. Every project starts to look like a zoning diagram. Hopefully that’s a good thing, but in reality it almost never is. Zoning codes are far too blunt an instrument to enact good design by legal fiat.
“Though they happen to be very good at generating bad design in bulk.”
Nathanael
I’d like to contrast my home town of Ithaca, NY, which is *actually competent*. We had our own housing affordability crisis due to no new housing being constructed since the 1950s. Starting with our new mayor Svante Myrick (who *could not afford an efficiency apartment on the mayor’s salary*, so he cared), in the last few years we have had multiple large multifamily buildings put up.
Several of these required demolishing buildings within a historic district (most of which were junky, but a few of which were nice but necessary because they were in the middle of a site). We’ve managed to keep the *truly* historic individual landmarks (except where they burned down by accident, unfortunately). And *the new buildings look nice*. They contribute to street life and the lived environment.
We know how to do it right. You want to know how, call our mayor up!
Mel
I find this article does not deal with the quantity of housing that was affordable and removed in this building boom. Seattle had a history of affordable housing that ended with the Allen era. Cascade neighborhood = south lake Union, a neighborhood no more. Industrial areas filled with Stadiums instead of those high density housing you are promoting. This is a values issue, and your values lie with the developers plans, not best use for all citizens. Stadiums and high income minority housing outweigh affordable and reassigned industrial land usage for working class, who are the majority of citizens.
Dan Bertolet
Mel –
As we have documented, homebuilding in Seattle causes relatively little loss of existing housing:
http://www.sightline.org/2016/08/17/seattle-1764-new-homes-21-demolitions-in-2016-displacement/
Furthermore, adding new homes helps keep average rents citywide under control, reducing economic displacement (when people leave because they can no longer afford rent), which is a far bigger problem than displacement caused by demolitions:
http://www.sightline.org/2016/08/10/displacement-the-gnawing-injustice-at-the-heart-of-housing-crises/
As for my values, they lie with creating an equitable city.
I'm New To Seattle
Interesting article and an interesting perspective. The author certainly has an agenda to push but offers up some good factual information as well.
With perhaps one exception all of the historic preservation locations he sites are indeed, pieces of junk which are in danger of crumbling the next time a truck goes by, let alone an earthquake happens.
Spuds looks as though it’s truly a Googie design, and a fairly well preserved one at that. There aren’t many Googie examples left so I would argue that one is worth saving. The rest of them? No great loss.
I would however be interested in the authors opinion on how architecture changes a city.
Ballard is a good example. The designs being built in Ballard are completely out of touch with the esthetic of the neighborhood. And I am not talking about size. You can build large complexes that blend in, but that is not what is happening. The structures being built aren’t designed for their lots. they are interchangeable cubes, with flat roofs (in Seattle?) that do not enhance the buildings around them, they clash, and overwhelm in a garish fashion.
Adding density does not have to be at odds with fitting into a neighborhood. When looking at design the preservation boards seem to focus on size. To me that is a mistake, large complexes can be designed which are also aesthetically appealing. Does the author have any thoughts on how to promote growth and good design. It’s easy to tear a piece of crap down and replace it with another, larger, piece of crap. How do you tear a piece of crap down and replace it with larger but more esthetic and attractive structure.
Dan Bertolet
Your questions about architecture are great but too much to take on in a comment thread! It’s subjective and I believe trying to regulate good design is a fool’s errand.
Otherwise, curious what “agenda” you think I’m pushing?
Rick Mohler
I support the position Dan takes in this article although I respect the opinions of those who might not.
However, I’m very concerned about the fate of the roughly 1100 unreinforced masonry buildings throughout the city that will be required to be either seismically upgraded or demolished in the near future. These buildings often provide relatively affordable market rate housing while contributing to the character of our neighborhoods.
As an architect who has designed upgrades to several of these buildings I know that doing so is very expensive and, in my experience, only “penciled out” because my clients were committed to the building, had deep pockets and, as a result, could take the long term view on return on investment. This is a rare set of circumstances.
In most cases, the building owner will not be able to afford the expense of retrofitting the building and will sell it to someone who, hopefully, will. However, the likely scenario is that the buyer will require a more typical and timely return on investment than my clients did. This will require a creative combination of financing, programming, design and construction to be feasible.
An emerging and promising model for this is to take existing unreinforced masonry apartment buildings, gut them and upgrade them across board (seismic, energy, life safety, etc) to breathe new life into the building for another 100 years. However, to pay for the upgrades, the building is converted from, say, 40 one and two bedroom units to, say, 120 small efficiency dwelling units.
A project of this type is currently proposed on Capitol Hill and is being opposed by the current tenants and other neighbors under the auspices of preservation.
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2018/04/save-the-royvue-residents-rally-to-thwart-sale-of-capitol-hill-building/
I’m not going to argue that a building with SEDU’s is better than a building with two and four bedroom units since we need two and four bedroom units. However, I will argue that a 100 year old masonry building with historic character refurbished with SEDU’s is better than the same building that goes without the required upgrades, is deemed uninhabitable, falls into disrepair and is demolished. My concern is that those fighting this project may be ensuring that the latter is the fate of this building. While I can’t confirm that this building is among the 1100 Seattle buildings that will require a seismic upgrade, it’s very likely that it is.
What’s required to save these buildings is creative problem solving and a willingness to put preservation into perspective. I hope that we can do so.
Heidi Bookenstock
I never thought about the significance of historic buildings in certain areas. The story about the history building in Seattle is super interesting. It’s also super interesting the preservation programs benefit economic development, civic identity, aesthetics, tourism, education, and environmental sustainability. https://milwaukeefortress.com/
Sue Stroud
I love seeing old buildings revived and made whole again. Here in Victoria British Columbia we’ve been working on this in many ways. Early on we kept the facades only, but that looked unsatisfactory in the end, now we rebuild the insides using what we can so an old bank is a lovely pub, the old Hudson’s Bay department store is lofts and suites on the upper floors and a public market below etc. In my tiny community of Brentwood Bay we persuaded a developer not to move a heritage house off the property (if he had it would lose its heritage status), but to move it back further on the property and use it. He did that and is making it seismically safe and using it for senior’s suites while he builds some townhouses for profit and shares the rest of the property with a non-profit housing society that is building a 40 unit subsidised apartment block for seniors and young folk starting out. It all suits the community and helps us keep young workers here with housing they can afford. It also makes a nice mix of young and old looking out for each other.
rick
It is down to nimby versus housing.