I believe that was intentional and that I was told it was to avoid putting lots of housing next to the freeway. Because fortunately no one lives near busy roads in Seattle.

So: @theurbanist.org is holding our holiday party next Tuesday, which is also our biggest fundraiser of the year.

I'll be there, and if you spring for the VIP ticket you even get to hear me make some remarks about how pivotal Urbanist reporting will be in 2026.
www.eventbrite.com/e/the-urbani...

I think it also manages to warp the council’s perspective. They all seemed eager to provide tree related comp plan amendments.

This has totally worked for the handful of retired tree activists. They have made tree loss, an issue that probably wouldn't show up in polls, esp. compared to housing cost and homelessness, into a major crisis. They just show up and say the same thing at every meeting.

All you paid protesters out there better watch out. Sen. Christian is coming for you this session.

Seattle voters in a nutshell: we need more housing options, but also let’s tax the folks who will provide those options.

My Northwest is doing its best to start blaming Katie Wilson for things happening while Bruce Harrell is still mayor. Can’t wait to see what they say when she’s actually in office.

Is the 16th the date? We have been speculating a similar date, but good to confirm!

Fuse can gloat all they want, but Amazon is shipping every job it can to Bellevue (the real HQ2). It’s already down 10k employees in Seattle, up to 14k in Bellevue, and laying the ground work to move a lot more. This means less revenue for Seattle and probable a lot more driving.

Type VA by the way.

I have never heard of this provision or had it come up. I worked on a 4 story apartment building on a narrow Capitol Hill street. I checked our fire review and they never mentioned it. There may be a special provision somewhere in the code. The 26’ clear street requirement would be very limiting.

ActBlue needs to offer a donation tier that includes not selling your information to anyone with a D after their name. They would bring in so much more.

It sure seems that she should have been done after she campaigned against Kamala in Michigan. I sure hope we get a better alternative to Adam Smith than her. I really want to vote him out.

You could do it in an NC-75 or 85 zone (assuming the zone didn’t have upper level setbacks). But in Seattle Design Review would compel a bunch of modulation. And now that’s gone it will be all rainbow Hardie panel instead of brick.

Downtown has been losing stores for years. This, and Nordstrom Rack’s move, is a great sign that national retailers may be willing to invest downtown. It is so dumb that people have to go to Bellevue or U Village or South Center to go shopping. But yeah, go to the library or buy local for books.

And I didn’t even catch the “between parking” clause, another poison pill.

Does that power line issue basically make these unbuildable? It sure would in Seattle.

We got some wet trick or treaters on North Beacon Hill!

Yet the Seattle Times has devoted multiple columns to disparaging them. The replace car trips and save money. I just did the side by side comparison: Line from Beacon Hill to South Park and Uber back and Lime was 1/3 the cost and almost as quick.

They, and a lot of folks, should say the truth: they endorsed him because they thought he was going to win and didn’t want to be on his bad side. And really, it’s no cost to them. Wilson will be on their side regardless.

I swear last time I went (which was a while ago) they had an all ages section.

He also offered only one out of the hundred plus amendments. And it was suggested by a constituent.

A whole lot of Seattle council members are convinced you can’t build on hills. Maybe they should walk around Capitol Hill or Queen Anne sometime.

More troubling is she said she thought they were just going to defer to what the district CM wanted. That is a failure at her job as a citywide representative.

I just listened to Alex on the Week in Review and he said the most important thing the comp plan can do is protect trees, not help house people. And just like most NIMBYs he said he was pro dense housing and then was opposed to every form of housing being built.

Guys please come to the comp plan hearing Friday, I’m begging you besties

I didn’t stick around to find out, just long enough to see he was okay. He was speeding and I’m guessing either impaired or distracted. Airport way is not some confusing or hard road to navigate.

That is me…

I was going to post about how amazing it was that I can now ride from Beacon Hill to South Park to Georgetown to downtown almost entirely in PBLs. But instead I’ll post this picture of a guy who smashed into the bike lane seconds after I rolled through:

ST wastes a lot of money by separating security and fare enforcement. They have tons of security standing around doing nothing, and a separate and meek fare enforcement crew trying to get people to pay. I have watched people wad up their warning in front of the enforcement folks who did nothing.