Belltown Messenger

Seattle real-estate king Martin Selig showed up at the Nov. 14 Belltown Housing and Land Use meeting, to show plans for his new 13-story development north of the Olympic Sculpture Park. He arrived with a scale model of the project and asked about "possibly bringing it up 50 feet" with the help of a variance from the city. He said the building would house rentals, not condos, and that they would be in a "middle-income" level. How much affordable housing will exist in a building that sits on prime downtown waterfront property on the north end of a $100 million sculpture park remains unclear.

BHLUS members told him that "if you get a variance everyone is going to get a variance." "True," he said bluntly. Selig wants to jack up his un-fabulous building a bit to make a few extra bucks, and that is the American way. He is an unpretentious businessman who would be a fool not to leverage every angle he can to milk that sweet property for all it's worth.

I'm all for some sort of sane, regulated capitalism, but let's face it - Seattle is run by real estate developers, and they generally get what they want, often to the detriment of public interest and good taste. To have a ghastly modernist condo butting right up against the Olympic Sculpture Park is an embarrassment to the Seattle Art Museum. In an ideal world, Selig's building would be designed as a giant sculpture in its own right, by Rem Koolhaas or some other superstar architect who could try to turn yet another multilevel human storage facility into a work of art.

Speaking of real estate kings, Stephanie Bowman and Brandon Morgan of Paul Allen's Vulcan and Howard Fitzpatrick of Callison Architects presented data on the proposed Vulcan project at Fifth and Lenora. The 240-foot residential tower is on a lot next to the Cinerama. The historic theater has "nostalgic value" for Allen, according to his apologists, who sported a video projector and an impressive slide show of architectural graphics.

Morgan pitched some amenities, such as an "eco p-patch" and a "partially covered dog walk with a dog grooming area, where you can shower them, and a special AstroTurf material made for dogs with antimicrobial treatment on it." Zander Batchelder asked the Vulcanites why their new Belltown condo was "almost a cookie cutter of any existing building. How is this going to add to the neighborhood?" he asked. "How is five decks of parking at a ratio of one spot per bedroom going to increase our potential for families, or children or play areas?"