A 4-story congregate residence with 52 sleeping rooms will soon be built on the corner of 15th Ave NW and NW 59th St.
That corner is the home to the former Smitty’s Barber Shop and Tease Salon (now at 1417 NW 54th St) and an attached empty house. It’s also within the boundaries of the Ballard HUB Urban Village, which is zoned to allow what the city refers to as small efficiency dwelling units.
Here’s a look at the architect’s design of the new structure, which will have retail at ground-level on the 15th/59th corner of the building, with no parking proposed:
The architect is for the project is Neiman Taber — for the full PDF of the design proposal, click here.
This looks like a place where people go to die (who do not need parking.) This is yet another example of an idiotically designed and useless structure. And how about that affordable housing? I bet these hospital looking rooms will cost an arm and a leg.
Is this like a dormitory?
Yes and they are all over the city and most are full. Average $900 to $1400.
Like a dorm but you have your own potty, but no shower or washing sink if the diagram is correct. That doesn’t make sense. Maybe there are better diagrams.
The units are tiny, but the baths are a full 0.75 with tiny showers and sinks. Another sink in the “kitchen” area, with a small fridge. Each floor shares a common kitchen with a stove/oven, sink, and full size fridge.
Except there’s no food plan
Perfect housing for affluent social justice communists.
Just imagine all the stimulating conversation you can have with your bunk mates about “offensive humor”, Trump-Hitler, cats, Islamophobia, the “evils of Christianity”, and veganism. How long until somebody gets “MeToo’d” for not diverting their eyes quick enough near a shared bathroom?
Tune in next week to find out in the next episode of “Seattle NPC Soy Life”!
Deep breaths . . . you’re going to be okay (unless you give yourself a heart attack with all of this animosity). Good luck!
Aw, Ballard’s lone Trump fan got triggered. It will be alright snowflake, it will be alright.
You guys forgot to call me a nazi rapist and blame me for the latest forest fire.
Still time, though. Don’t forget: cats cause brain infections!
It’s totally weird that you keep bringing up Nazis. I just don’t get why you’re so angry. I might disagree with your politics (hard to say, you’re just kind of ranting). Do you think everyone hates you? It’s not your politics that make you unpleasant.
Yes Dan, we are very diverse here today in Ballard. Were there poor people BEFORE Republicans Danny boy? Do you also feel the French people just loved the Germans invading some 80 years ago? Who’ll be there for you some day sport? It appears to me you are SO open minded that it all has simply fallen out. I bet you’d just love to wear a tidy government issue and uniform like they did in communist China up to the early 80’s too. Or perhaps people like me wearing a badge so you know who to hate and mistrust and really want gone, or sent to the chambers. Yes Dan, look at just how far you’ve come.
I never cease to be amused at people who throw around “Communist” as an insult. It’s like 1983 all over again!
Here’s the “density” everybody ordered. Hope you enjoy it!
Feeling “world class” yet, Seattle?
Not everybody, clearly. While this is one example of providing housing, there are others that are being put up as well. Lots of true 1 bedroom apartments, and some 2 bedroom. Unfortunately there’s a huge chunk of “missing middle” that needs to be implemented. While these are clearly needed as seen by the fact this type of place gets rented quickly throughout the city, there’s a bigger need right now for young couples starting families who don’t want to move to the suburbs, or take their skills (and money) to another location.
>starting a family with a “wife”
>living in Seattle
Pick one.
First of all…why is wife in parentheses?
Second of all, from the city’s perspective, why would they not want families living in the city?
>appears well versed in business and real estate
>ignorant of social trends, marriage rate failures/marriage decline
>worries about parentheses more than quality of life in Seattle
>Doesn’t understand how to properly format
>>>>>>>makes no sense, point doesn’t get across
<appears well versed in nonsense
I’ll ask again, since it clearly got somewhere the first time. Why is wife in parentheses? Why would the city not want families living in the city?
I was just waiting for your usual reply to call me a “rapist nazi”, so I was surprised by an actual question.
In response to your question: It doesn’t matter what the “city wants”.
Read any publication, commie or reactionary, they all say the same about marriage rates, fertility, dating, and lower sexual activity in general. Also, nobody wants to raise kids in a giant junkie zoo. I guess some people like to sacrifice themselves, and their kids, on the altar of social justice – so, sure, some will enjoy looking “woke” on Facebook because their kids get to experience the “vibrancy” of regular street crime. I guess you could make the case that the “sanctuary city” angle, like the replacement strategy in Europe, is to shore up the plummeting birthrates by flatly importing people (and voters!).
Also, about “wife”: you’ll meet very few couples with hyphenated names that last longer than a decade, and 5min of basic internet research will tell you everything you need to know about mating and dating here in Dworkinville.
My usual reply? you must be either paranoid or seriously have me confused with someone else. i haven’t done anything along those lines.
your rant has convinced me you have some serious mental health issues and for your sake i hope you get some help.
i talked about there being a need for the missing middle – housing for couples starting families. you went into some deranged babble about, well, frankly i can’t decipher it.
if you want to have a productive conversation, ok, great, let’s do that. otherwise, take a breath, it’s all going to be ok.
Huh, I must’ve missed it because you offered no counter argument or even addressed any of my points. Yes, clearly I am the crazy one.
Here’s some reading if you get tired of Tumblr:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/
“Dworkinville”? Really?
Incel?
In the above post, “wife” would be in quotation marks, Robby. Not parentheses (these would be those). Guess you are grammar challenged, too.
As for “wife” in quotes, well some of us get that. I bet the new mayor and the old mayor (Mayor pEDo) get it. I’ve always wondered who is a top and who is a bottom.
Why is wife in quotes? Why would the city not want families in the city?
it wasn’t in parentheses….it was in quotation marks!!!!
Those aren’t parentheses. They are quotation marks.
Great news, Seattle! After this one opens the next one coming up will be a DOGS ONLY congregate residence called “Bark Town!”. Stay tuned, and remember, we not only make money from your purchases we also get HEFTY DEFENSE CONTRACTS. Thanks!
Can I sign myself up for this? Sometimes I feel like a dog. I saw a woman on Ballard Ave yesterday, blonde, stovepipe jeans, black boots, the whole package. She could put a leash on me, take me to the Commons. I might pee on the hobos. OK, I’ll stop now.
No wonder there are so many homeless people. I left Ballard in the 70’s because my husband was in the military, I try and go back to Seattle every year, I was born in Ballard. It has gotten so dirty and expensive, and there is no parking and you are going to ask a lot of money a month. I live in Arizona I have a 4 bedroom 2 bath, I only pay $656.00 a month. (Buying).
The “homeless” are mostly drifters who come here for high quality legal weed, cheap heroin, ZERO LAW ENFORCEMENT, and a support network of moronic corporate shills who make a cut out of taxing citizens to pay for these criminal losers. Most of them ARE NOT just “down on their luck” types. Hell, half the time you can attack a cop and win the ghetto lottery if they defend themselves because we have so many lunatic social justice types who protect them. Wouldn’t you come here if you were them?
They refuse services to stay out of databases because THEY HAVE WARRANTS.
They whole situation is sad.
Soyboy, you forgot the free meals at St. Luke’s, free laundry and showers at the Urban Rest Stop, free stuff stolen from QFC, Safeway, Sweet Mickie’s, both Bartells’ stores, Walgreens, and the medical freebies at Nyer Urness, and all the beater RV parking 24/7 that the rest of us get parking tickets for, and sleep ANYWHERE you want on Market St (can take a poop there too, if its’ too inconvenient to walk to the port-a-potty.
Hi, and thanks for your support! Shh…don’t tell anyone my secrets, Soyboy! It sounds like you’re already Woke, though, so that’s working in my favor. And remember, Vote Salty, Vote O’Brine 2019!
There is a reason why Arizona is so cheap to live in, housing is about supply and demand. People want to live in Ballard, they don’t want to live in Arizona.
People tend to “live” near robust centers of employment, for work – hobo junkies excluded. People “want” to live in warm, sunny places.
Arizona and WA are growing at a similar rate and Arizona is almost at big as WA in population
Yep, this is how a growing city looks.
>eats organic food
>touts company town dynamic as healthy sign
>denigrates fast food, walmart
>cites demand as proof of quality
that’s great for you that you eat organic food. i’m not sure why you’re continuing to make unintelligible comments. that’s your prerogative if you want to denigrate fast food and walmart…but that has nothing to do with the conversation.
again, if you want to have a productive conversation, i’m all ears. or if you want to continue your drunken stupor, please, go right ahead.
Non-family housing at its finest
This firm specializes in such housing. These are basically bedrooms and baths (and showers), with communal kitchens. I’m not a fan except where such buildings could be used as halfway houses for people in transition from homelessness to independent living. Other projects by the firm have been for non-profits who focus on that market segment and include space for counseling and other social services. It doesn’t seem that is the case here…just a greedy developer.
I lived in a place like this as a student (but had only 6 units). I can see where it makes sense for people in their 20s who want to live alone, but can’t afford a full apartment right now. Many of the people I know in that age range don’t have cars, and rely on transit, bikes and walking. Heck, I know a couple of people twice that age that would also like the same thing. I hope it is priced affordably to provide options to people. Many people who serve you in various roles everyday need more affordable options close to work.
I’m not a fan either, as in wanting to live there, but I have nothing against other people living there, or wanting to.
Yep.
Good for kids that work at start-ups. They are basically living a life that’s an extension of graduate school, so it’s natural for them to stay in a dorm. Like Jeff Bezos said, why have a work-life balance when you can just work all the time? (awful)
shared showers and kitchens? what could go wrong?
great germ incubators though. echh
look like prison cells…a toilet just sitting there, no wall or partition? am i seeing that correctly? wtf.
also, each person living there needs to sign a form agreeing to not own a car.
These buildings should be required to provide off street parking.
Places like these are often occupied by people who can’t afford to live somewhere with their own kitchen, let alone a car. Ballard should instead have zoned parking.
Jesus Christ people, shut the f up about parking.
Where will their bikes be parked? In the uni (Too small to be a unit?
“Looks like a prison?” Have you ever seen a prison?
“It’s where you go to die?” I think the boarded up house looks a little more like a final resting place.
Just wanted to point out the ridiculousness of some of these comments. I dont really care what they build, but this doesn’t look like a prison and certainly looks better than a creepy old abandoned house.
Wonderful news! I see all the “people who make less money than me shouldn’t be allowed to live in Ballard” brigade is out in full force.
The trick is, you leave Seattle every once in a while. You wake up, breathe in some rantless air, peer past petty pretexts and bask in sunny dispositions. The only people who live here full time need the drugs, fear mongering or outright hatred to feed their miserable misantropy.
There are much happier places, just about everywhere.
Oh yes, and please do not shop Scamazon.
Happy Holidays Folks !
They misspelled “tenements”
Uggh. I don’t mind the idea of the place (more housing) but the building covers the entire lot, with no setback. Aesthetically hideous for the neighborhood. And of course, no parking.
This is so depressing.
Anyone chime in who has more info, but my understanding is these style buildings are among the highest rent per square-root, while often referred to as”affordable”. It’s a great scam for the developer, probably the most profitable style residential model since you get such high rent per square foot on a relatively small building using inexpensive materials. If you think these modern Seattle buildings are unsightly today imagine how they’ll look in 30 years lol. I doubt the construction quality will hold longer than that. The fact is nobody cares. I’m not singling out this project necessarily, cause I think it looks better than many others, but generally speaking what a disgrace to replace our Victorian-era and Crafstman-style homes with this gray and white boxy stuff.
You can have Victorian or Craftsman, or you can have affordable. “Affordable” means per-month, not per-square-foot.