Eastside density proponents getting screwed - in the Sammamissionary position

SEATTLE, Washington - I've written several times about the dyspepsia brought on in a tiny percentage of the Seattle population when developers want to make substantive investments that may result in some small change to the "character" of the community. The sourness apparently extends to the suburbs, as the Sammamish city council voted 5-2 to squash a plan for increased density in an under-development part of town.

This being government, they didn't shoot down the plan, they shot down a plan to start thinking about the plan:

What council was asked to decided on Tuesday night was not whether to allow that level of commercial density, but whether or not to begin a process of considering that level of commercial density, as part of an annual Comprehensive Plan revision.

Later in the article, the author notes that both the county and state governments have set growth targets that some communities have to meet. What to do, what to do... layer after layer of government engaged in turf and numbers wars while developers sit around waiting with their thumbs up their asses.

Satanism - bad for pedestrians

WASHINGTON, DC - Washington, screw you and your Freemasonry/Satanism based spoke-hub street layout. It seems to take about ten minutes to cross some of these things on foot.

Note below, I shot the photo of that sign from its good side - the sidewalk. Because if you're in a car on the street, the crack DC sign crews planted the sign of parking policies for the street about two feet from the street map, blocking it from view.

All you need to know about the "housing crisis" in one press release from nine years ago

SEATTLE, Washington - Via Cafe Hayek, a press release from Wells Fargo in August 2000 (text not bolded in original):

A new home financing program, designed to spur homeownership among California’s educators, may receive an “A” from teachers throughout the state. The program, announced today by Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc., the California Housing Loan Insurance Fund (CaHLIF) and Freddie Mac, allows teachers working within the state to purchase a home with a downpayment of just $500.
The program also offers teachers relaxed credit guidelines – making it easier to qualify for the program – and higher qualifying ratios, which allows homebuyers to qualify for more home. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage will be the exclusive provider of these loans; CaHLIF will provide downpayment assistance and mortgage insurance; and, Freddie Mac will purchase the loans.
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A starting salary for a California public school teacher is $29,000 a year, according to the California Teachers Association, while the average teacher’s salary is $44,000. Meanwhile, the median home price in California is $217,520.
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While California educators will only need $500 for a downpayment, the remaining downpayment will be funded by CaHLIF in the form of a 3 percent simple interest loan with payment deferred until the end of the loan term, or when the home is sold or refinanced.

As a commenter at CH noted, a $200K loan under these circumstances would be about $1,300/mo for someone making $44K a year. I make more than triple that and I consider my mortgage of under $1,600 to be approaching the upper range of what I consider acceptable relative to my income.

The "crisis" has repeatedly been spun in the media as crazy, gambling, out of control banks making bad decisions, but in this case all the bank (Wells Fargo) is doing is writing an ill-advised loan, scraping off a bit of vigorish, and dumping the turkey loan off on the only kind of entity that would want such a thing, a government mutant like Freddie Mac.

This particular example is doubly odious, doubly indicative of the danger of having a government entity tinkering in the housing market, because not only was Freddie gobbling up absurd loans, but in this case it was a special for teachers!. Why are teachers making $44K more deserving of cushy loans than anyone else making $44k? At least it was available to both public and private school teachers... cold comfort.

More reasons not to declare a national crisis when someone misses a mortgage payment

SEATTLE, Washington - We the public continue to receive news every month about the percentage of homeowners who are behind on their mortgage payments or in foreclosure. The impression usually given is that every one of these parties just needs a helping hand - that they're scouring through the couch cushions and hitting up relatives for a few bucks, just so they can scrape a payment together. Can't we as a society help these people? Who could possibly want to miss a mortgage payment?

Turns out, a lot of people. I already discussed people intentionally getting foreclosed and making a few bucks in the process last month. Now there's more: a long Time piece on Las Vegas real estate presents another variation of such a strategy. This variation involves short selling (which is the lender agreeing to let a house be sold for less than the value of the loan and letting this amount fully satisfy the borrower's obligation) and is being promoted by Vegas agent Brooke Boemio:

Boemio specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.

There you go. Creative, perhaps even profitable - but is it ethical?

It's an entire city of John Dillingers, feeling guiltless for stealing from the banks. Boemio is well aware that short selling isn't ethical [emphasis mine - jmr] and is exacerbating Vegas' economic problems. People, she believes, should make their payments, accept their paper losses and ride out the crash. "Guess what, a______s of Las Vegas. That's what gambling is about. That's what investing is about," she says. "It's greedy. But we're all doing it. Because why not?" It's very hard, she says, to suffer as the one honest person in a town of successful con artists.

I'm not a real estate guru but I've been researching and googling this and I'm not really seeing what's inherently unethical about short selling. First of all, the lender has to agree to it - it's their choice to just go ahead with a foreclosure if they so choose. From the seller's perspective, it's their choice to pursue a short sale and there is damage to their credit (albeit not as bad as a foreclosure) but as the article notes, under the Boemio strategy, "they just bought a new house, so they don't care."

There do seem to be some "ethical" concerns around short selling, in such areas as how and when to disclose to the buyer that the property is a short sale, when to list the short offer as "pending" in the MLS, and the fact that some lenders will drag their feet on approval of a short offer, hoping for a slightly better offer to materialize. I don't think any of this renders the whole concept inherently unethical.

Notice what's missing from this picture? No government "rescue" of borrowers, no posturing politicians, no snouts in the trough - just a resolution of the bloat in real estate using existing processes. The banks may take some losses and try to stick their noses in the trough, and unfortunately they'll probably succeed. Still, let's not think of every borrower behind on their payments as a helpless victim.

Found @ The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid

I live downtown now!?

SEATTLE, Washington - Downtown West Seattle? Oh really. I've talked at times about moving downtown, I guess the downtown has moved to me.

Getting a bit big for our britches here. Downtown Ravenna thinks this is presumptuous.

Remember, West Seattle - most of the rest of the city thinks West Seattle is somewhere in Kitsap County.

Do not break the momentum at WS Whole Foods site

SEATTLE, Washington - The heavy equipment has started the beneficial destruction at the Whole Foods site in West Seattle. Good.

To the person driving the equipment: if some neighborhood type comes up to you, and expresses concern over whether the apartment building to be built will have a catenary arch or a lancet arch at its entrance, and that this issue is of great importance to the character of the neighborhood, and suggests you should stop working until some community meetings are held to discuss this... just ignore them and keep working. You're doing the right thing.

Zoning Junta appeasement whack-a-mole for West Seattle Whole Foods

SEATTLE, Washington - In a freer world, I'd have a shiny new Whole Foods a block from my house today. As it stands, the developer, BlueStar, is receiving another round of bludgeoning from the dozen or so community activists who've realized they can have fun designing every last detail of a $65M construction project without investing a penny.

BlueStar sent an operative to a recent neighborhood meeting to beg for mercy regarding some recent design changes. I won't re-hash it all here, but it's the usual stuff - what happened to the roofline, what happened to the storefront, what happened to the plants, what color is the roof, what material is the roof, where are the balconies, there's too much parking, there's not enough parking, let's study the shading some more, on and on.

Regarding "what happened to the towers", BlueStar noted that the towers were removed per their last meeting with the Zoning Junta. The desire for towers waxes and wanes with the moon.

Even though they're already digging away at the site, another Zoning Junta meeting is set for August 14 to further ponder the roof resins and street buffers. BlueStar has even hired Vlad Oustimovitch, who appears to be the Winston Wolf of West Seattle design issues, to help get the developer and the "community" on the same page.

As I've said before, I don't think subjective design aesthetic issues should be subject to community review. Check for safety, check for compliance with regard to building height, etc., and that's that. I'll be able to see the thing from my living room window, and I still don't think the "community" should be dictating aesthetics to the developer. Surprise me.

I mentioned all of this to the operative at the BlueStar booth at the street fair this weekend, and I shan't say what he said to me but he didn't say I was crazy.

Different perspectives of "nearness"

SEATTLE, Washington - I golfed at the Bellevue Muni the other day, and one of the guys I got paired up with lived right across the street from the course. As he was talking to another Bellevue guy about their housing situations he noted that one of the things he liked about his location was that it was "near everything".

Not only is the Bellevue Muni not "near everything", but I'm having trouble thinking of even one thing that is "near" it.

Useless "Landmark" Denny's in Ballard finally allowed to die

SEATTLE, Washington - The rights of a property holder - enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, Magna Carta, that list nailed to Martin Luther's door, etc. - have for once held firm against the Seattle neighborhood busybodies.

The old Denny's in Ballard, which was granted Historical Landmark status in February, is probably going to be torn down anyway. In a meeting last week, the same board that granted landmark status voted unanimously that there was no economically feasible plan for the property that included leaving the building intact - so even though the building is still officially a "landmark" the owner can tear it down.

Click through on the link, you can see the Landmarks and Preservation board... the chin rubbing, the pen-twiddling, the hangdog expressions... they're in agony.

“It’s a very sad situation,” said board chair Stephen Lee. “It’s a bad situation to be in.”
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Board chair Stephen Lee — who rallied the board to preserve the Denny’s three months ago — refused to talk to the media and was overheard telling someone, “I need a drink.”

He needs a drink? I need a drink after following this charade. I hope I hear when the wrecking ball will arrive, I'll be there.

A graphical representation of my aimless life

SEATTLE, Washington - One night recently, I had nothing much to do, so I decided to try to map out all the cities where I've spent the night. It's a motley collection, everything from a double-wide in rural Georgia, to a Motel 6 in Oakland next to one of those mini-marts that sells individual cigarettes, to some of North America's finest hotels. I think I have 71 cities in 26 states, BC, and the District of Columbia. I might have stayed in Ogden, Utah one night but I don't remember well enough to put it on the list.

I got a late start, when I started looking at grad schools in 1995 I had only slept in 5 states, and I never even got out of the Eastern time zone until a flight to Idaho in 1998.

The annotated map is here (or click on the map).

We will crush your bold design elements

SEATTLE, Washington - One of the alleged objectives of the Design Review Boards in Seattle is to "encourage better design and site planning that enhances the character of the city and ensures that new development fits sensitively into neighborhoods", but any time a developer proposes some "character" it gets the tsk-tsk treatment from the board.

The Slog previewed some review sessions this evening, one of which is a 30-unit condo building; the developer had the temerity to propose that the building be painted in a striking yellow. Whoa there, said the board:

Developer Masto Properties has proposed replacing a squat apartment building with a six-story building, containing 30 condominiums and parking for 32 vehicles below grade. One point of friction: It’s bright yellow.

“They said it might be too bold,” Steve Gawronski of Group Architect Inc. says about the design-review board’s take on the design at a previous meeting. But the color works with the building and is spectacularly refreshing. Thousands of cans of taupe paint already threw up all over pre-fab boxes around the city—we don’t need another one.

This building would look fine there (I lived so close to this location that my old residence is almost in the rendering), but frankly my opinion of the color shouldn't matter, the opinion of the "community" about the color shouldn't matter, and the opinion of the Design Review Board shouldn't matter.

Does anyone on these Design Review Boards, once in a while, just say "you know, it's none of our fucking business what color you want to paint this building. Surprise us!"

Nitpicky zoning's unindicted co-conspirator - Landmarks Preservation

SEATTLE, Washington - The neighborhood busybodies and resentful bittermen of Seattle (and elsewhere) have multiple avenues available to attack property owners and casually impose their subjective style preferences on every new building in their radar range. One is zoning "design reviews", which I have discussed before; another tool on their belt is the Landmarks Preservation process.

This week's "landmark" is a building in Ballard that recently ended a 24-year run as a Denny's restaurant. The property was acquired by Benaroya Companies with the intention of tearing it down and building condos. Benaroya (in a strategy that many developers end up using) actually applied for Landmark Preservation for the property, so they could (hopefully) get landmark status rejected and out of the way before some neighborhood types file for preservation later in the process and gum things up.

The Landmarks Preservation cabal met last night and, despite Benaroya's best efforts, voted 6-3 to declare the exterior of the building to be a historical landmark. No tearing it down now; options include building condos (or other stuff) around the structure, renovating the interior and doing something else with it, sell it, or let it rot.

You can tell from reading the comments of the supporters of restrictive classifications (just as you can tell from the people that throw darts at design review meetings) that many of them just use the process as an indirect, spiteful way to oppose condos and development in general, because developers are rich and greedy and the proposed condos would not be "affordable". In fact, this building was recently slated to be torn down and turned into a station for the proposed Monorail. The Monorail project vaporized, and the land was subsequently sold to Benaroya. No one seemed to give a shit about the historical significance of the building when it was going to be replaced with a noble, politically correct mass transit project, but try to tear it down for condos that a barista can't afford and suddenly the building's a piece of Seattle, Architectural, Washington State, and World history.

The zoning junta was in a foul mood

SEATTLE, Washington - I have criticized the proceedings of zoning meetings before, but I did this based on media reports and not from personal witness. This is not journalism! So, I decided to attend an Early Design Guidance meeting for a proposed six-story, mixed-use building in my neighborhood.

I arrived a bit early. There were three design proposals taped to the wall, which differed from one another in their placement of the building's courtyard. The designer may be good at designing buildings but is not so good at English, as one design noted that something was "shaded for the most of the day, accept for high noon." I have a diagram that includes helpful comments like "live/work units?" (seemingly an orgasm-inducing phrase among planning types) and "ped friendly storefront" (it's a storefront on a sidewalk, yes, I guess that's ped friendly).

The zoning junta was in full attendance, seated in a row at a table. After some brief comments, the developer (who seemed to know he was already a beaten man) discussed his proposals for about 15 minutes. The board then started questioning him; it reminded me of oral examinations from high school.

The concern that emerged from the board at this time (and it came up over and over) was the "massing" of the zone and the "use of the envelope". Nobody was thrilled with the courtyard. When asked about whether the courtyard space could be used differently (e.g. for "jagged edges"), the developer noted that they "haven't designed anything yet." This is the EARLY design meeting.

The developer was also asked what "themes" from the neighborhood he had incorporated into the design. He was as evasive as an unprepared high-schooler on this, noting that the neighborhood had an "interesting pastiche" of stuff. (Of course, the way to get a neighborhood with an interesting pastiche is to have less restrictive zoning, not more restrictive.)

Comment from the dozen or so members of the public in attendance followed, with many concerns about the location of the parking entrance (in my view a legitimate concern) and one person that had a bunch of criticisms locked and loaded, from wanting "shadow studies" to "more landscaping" to changing the design to have "a lot less coverage" of the lot, to doing something about the "huge blank wall" on the south side of the building.

Finally, the board members deliberate among themselves, which you can listen to but you're not allowed to say anything. Some attendees pulled their chairs right up to the board's table, but had to stay silent.

Most of the board's focus was on the evils of the courtyard and how this "mass" could be better used in the building. While one member thought you could have a courtyard if it was "done smart", most of the others wanted to change the roofline of the building to make it lower on the east side, to have it agree more with the slope of the hill and fit in better with the shorter, differently zoned buildings to the east. To do this, and have the same number of units in the building, you have to get the "mass" from somewhere, thus putting the courtyard on the sacrificial altar.

The developer noted that one of the advantages of the courtyard was that it allowed all the apartment units to have at least 2 walls with natural light. The chair of the board said she lived for years in a small apartment in San Francisco with only one wall of windows. Well, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for you!

This was roughly what I expected, some legitimate concerns (the issues of ingress/egress to the parking level and alleyway are legitimate, as this location is on a sleep slope on an arterial road) along with lots of issues that are only of external, cosmetic importance to anyone that doesn't live there - the landscaping and the roofline being most prominent. Removing or diminishing the courtyard significantly hurts the building's residents, and the resulting change to the roofline is only going to be noticed and appreciated by experts and the people that demanded it.

Usually there is only one Early Design Guidance meeting for a proposal, but it appears (I did not stay until the very end) that the zoning junta is going to demand that this developer go back to the drawing board, shift the "massing" of the building to please people looking at it to the detriment of people living in it, and come back for another EDG.

update: here is West Seattle Blog's coverage of the meeting.

The petty totalitarianism of Zoning and Community Involvement

SEATTLE, Washington - I've never paid much attention to zoning issues before, but I've been following some recent zoning news in Seattle. It's now clear that the people on zoning boards (and the civilians that attend the meetings) get involved and endlessly harass developers because of some combination of (1) having nothing better to do, (2) needing their egos stroked, or (3) being opposed to the development and endlessly throwing sand in the gears as revenge.

Our first exhibit is a four-story, 12-condo mixed use building in the Admiral district. After a year of design reviews and negotiations with the zoning junta, the design is almost fully blessed. One of the remaining conditions: They want the roof of the ground-level parking garage to become some sort of "common space" for the residents.

There's already a resident deck on the top of the condo portion. Why the hell is it the business of the zoning junta what is done with the small garage rooftop? Are the going to scale the wall and have a barbecue? This is just busybodies being busybodies. (I have a theory on why the designer wasted money on the main roof deck and is about to waste more on the garage-top deck; that will come in a later posting.)

At the same board meeting, a proposed Petco a few blocks down the street got much saltier treatment. They've been slugging this one out for a while, as it would replace a restaurant (that is going to close anyway) with some sentimental value in the neighborhood.

Now, if you don't want a Petco on your street, fine, deny them and let them move on. But no, we're getting round after round of micromanagement of the design, tweaking the placement of trees, changing the placement of the parking lot, demanding a smaller building, demanding a bigger building, changing the roofline, changing windows to let more light into the store (!), and on and on.

Some people did protest that California Avenue is the "Main Street" of the area and that a Petco is unsuitable. One problem - this Petco is replacing one that is closing just a few blocks down the same street. The cat is long out of the bag on that, so to speak.

Last but not least we have the coverage in The Stranger of the "Townhome Invasion". Apparently developers have wised up on how to avoid the attentions of the zoning junta:

What's happening in Morgan Junction is also happening in other parts of the city. Townhomes are popping up all over Seattle as development booms, and some developers are using a process called "piecemealing" to expedite new construction. In piecemealing, a developer can purchase several small adjacent lots, file separate permits for each lot, and skirt the pesky public-comment period and environmental reviews that accompany major construction projects.

Of course they're trying to avoid the busybodies. But, to no avail - local resident Vlad Oustimovitch got a hold of the developer of some of the townhomes and browbeat them into making some changes, including lowering the height of several townhomes and modifying the landscaping.

As far as the height, I believe they did not change the number of stories - so how much could the height have changed? I'll tell you exactly how much - not enough to make a difference to the aesthetic, but just enough to make Mr Oustimovitch feel good about himself. And the landscaping - presumably they're trying to build townhomes that are attractive; I doubt they landscaped them with rusted-out car bodies. But they changed it... everyone feels good now.

As it happens, Mr Oustimovitch is a planner and architect by trade. So, there are only two kinds of projects that he has a say in - those for which he's hired, and those for which he isn't hired.

I hate to pick on Vlad Oustimovitch - I don't know him, he's probably a sweetheart - but he's the guy in the story.