More Housing and Less Parking

2016 was a busy year for us, with a slew of new projects breaking ground and an even larger number starting the design process. I did a quick look back at our work from this year to see what we have been up to.

All together we worked on 31 projects, creating new homes for 599 people. Five of the projects were townhouses, five were single family homes, and 21 were apartment buildings.

Increasingly we find that our clients are trending away from single family and townhouse projects towards apartment buildings. Inside of this shift toward apartments is another trend regarding parking, the extent of which I hadn’t fully appreciated until I did this look-back exercise: Our townhouse projects have a lot of parking, but our apartment projects have hardly any parking at all.

# of Projects	Type	Unit Count	Parking Count	Parking Ratio
21	Apartment	562	18	0.03
5	Townhouse	31	44	1.42

Our townhouse and apartment projects are getting built in fairly similar locations, namely close-in neighborhoods on small infill lots of 5000-10000sf. When this land is developed at townhouse density (1 unit per 1000sf of land) these projects can hold a parking ratio that is fairly typical for a car-based city. But at apartment densities (1 unit per 100-200sf of land) providing parking in any meaningful quantity becomes untenable. Put another way, if the code still required parking, very few of those apartment projects would have ever gotten built. Instead, they would likely have been townhouse developments, and in place of 560 apartments we would have built about 75 townhomes (and 100 parking spaces).

This trend in our work reflects a simple truth about the direction we are headed as a city: Over the coming years we are going to welcome a lot of new people, but we are not going to add a lot of parking spaces. Rather, we are going to build infrastructure for public transit. We are going to walk more and bike more. We will learn to make use of car sharing and delivery companies. We are going to price our street parking to use the resource more effectively, and we will eventually learn to stop thinking of the curb in front of our homes as our personal possession. 

This will not be an easy transition for many people. Seattle is going to become a very different city than the one I grew up in. Yes, we will lose some bits and places that we love. But we are also minting new treasures by the armload with many more yet to come. By allowing the city to grow and change and make room for new people, we preserve the city’s essence as the place where people come to seek opportunity. I for one am excited to help build our future, to make homes for the people moving here, and to extend to others some of the same opportunities that I have so richly enjoyed.

2016 Wrap Up

As we prepare for another busy year, a quick look back at some of our multi-family projects from 2016:

Courtyard Townhomes: We continued our work to develop and refine the courtyard townhouse development model that we started with Marion Green, marrying high density ownership housing with an innovative courtyard concept that hides the parking and creates community open space.

Olympic View Courtyard Townhouses - Completed Fall 2016

Alki Courtyard Townhouses - Permits almost ready, Construction to begin early 2017

Mark Center in Arlington, VA. A 145 unit master planned community using our courtyard townhouse archetype.

Adaptive Re-Use: Quite a bit of our work was focused on existing buildings - fitting more units inside existing structures, adding on new stories, and re-purposing older buildings that have otherwise reached the end of their economic life.

1722 Summit Avenue.
A stem-to stern renovation and top story addition to a 100 year old rooming house, creating 49 new units. The project is the first of several projects by Anew Development emphasizing the adaptive re-use and rehabilitation of old character structures, giving them new economic life while preserving existing building fabric.

423 Terry Avenue.
An un-reinforced masonry apartment building gets a total seismic retrofit while being converted into a 112 unit congregate residence, fixing a major safety hazard while preserving a significant character building.

Accessory Dwelling Units: Interest in mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages has increased quite a bit recently as families look for opportunities to use their homes to satisfy a whole variety of needs and life transitions: Inter-generational housing for grandparents or adult children, rentals to provide extra income, downsizing in-place, or simply creating more housing for more people.

Innovative Infill: Because we focus on urban infill, much of our work is on sites with odd geometries and configurations, leading to unique solutions where each project derives its character from a response to the site's inherent limitations (and opportunities).

Hamilton Apartments - A 51 unit mixed use apartment building carefully fit into a sloping triangular site at the crossing of 23rd and Madison. The difficult site geometry generated a building with a thin floorplate, an internal light court, and small units oriented with their broad side along the window wall, creating unique apartments with generous natural light and views.

2227 Yale Avenue E
An infill apartment building carefully scaled down along the fromt residential street facade with
a back half of the project that scales up to take advantage of views toward Lake Union

2227 Yale Ave E - Axonometric View

Microhousing: We have pursued a unique approach to microhousing that emphasizes small affordable private rooms paired with generous common amenities arranged to foster social interaction among residents. 

Seattle Artworks @ 901 Hiawatha Pl S is our first micro-housing project with Neiman Taber acting as the principal developer.  Seattle Artworks is congregate micro-housing intended as a live-work artist community. The units are designed as lofts to provide enough room to accommodate a small work area in the unit. The main floor is dedicated mostly to a large shared commons and a commercial space that we will rent out to an arts-oriented non-profit

Seattle Artworks, typical unit cross section. Construction to begin February 2017.

8311 15th Ave NW - An 83 unit microhousing building stitching together affordable housing, a residential commons, incubator retail spaces, and a shared courtyard, all connected to each other and to the public way. 

8311 15th Ave NW - Ground floor spaces interconnected with each other and the sidewalk.