5-story office building planned for 15th and 50th

Meghan Walker Ballard

The parking lot next to Les Schwab on 15th Ave NW might turn into offices.

A Land Use Application has been submitted to allow a 5-story office building with parking for 12 vehicles.

Comments may be submitted through Oct. 7 either by email, PRC@seattle.gov, or mail to: Department of Construction & Inspections, ATTN: Public Resource Center, P.O. Box 34019, Seattle, WA 98124-4019.

For more about the application, click here.

22 thoughts to “5-story office building planned for 15th and 50th”

  1. 5 stories and 12 parking spots. That’s fewer parking spots than the parking lot that’s currently there! Either there’s only going to be two people on each floor, or they’re really going all-in that the employees of this office tower will be comfortable with public transport.

    1. I live in Ballard and have worked downtown for the last decade. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve driven to work. I ride my bike or take the bus. Dozens of people I work with do the same. Do you think Amazon has parking spots in SLU for all of its employees? Do you think there are enough spots for every person who works in the Columbia Center? How about the original Washington Mutual building?

      1. Not bad points, and can’t wait until we get to that point, but public transit TO Ballard from elsewhere all around the city is not very good. You have mentioned downtown, which nearly every bus goes to, and SLU, which while still pretty terrible in the grand scheme, has considerably more stops than Ballard. Sure, this is small compared to either of those, but based on public transit to Ballard (no light rail for another 16 years), what realistically is going to happen is we will be heavily subsidizing these businesses by them taking up more street parking.

    1. Really? So the 50,000+ highly educated employees that Amazon built 40+ buildings for in South Lake Union don’t have “real skills”?

        1. There’s a common theme with those on the right, such as Paintkong, to equate making money with being “smart” or “educated”.

          1. I think there is more of a correlation with over-educated people lacking marketable skills and\or ambition, and not earning much money……..but then targeting those with money with their personal jealousies.

          3. The “common theme” here is chaos and ensuring we always have a permanent underclass for you to feel guilty about, then feed, clean up after, and then somehow blame “right wingers” for. The “common theme” here is raising your taxes over and over to pay for this largess. Turn off MSLSD and the Chicken Noodle Network.

          4. First, despite individual exceptions (the rich idiot or poor genius) over any large sample size hire education correlates with higher incomes. College grads earn more than high school grads. Second, writing software is “pushing keys in a particular order” like writing Shakespeare is putting letters on a page in a particular order or painting the Mona Lisa is daubing paint on a canvas. Third, anything can be misused (a hammer can pound a nail or kill someone) but computer software drives medical imaging, instant communication, inexpensive
            transportation, clean water and thousands of other things that benefit mankind.

            Seek help. And think before you post.

      3. LOL, “highly educated”. Define “highly educated” here for us all. “Smart” is another objective word too. Bringing you mutt to work makes you brilliant I guess then. Sad the building industry is starving for people with real old world skills. You see, these NEVER go out of style and pay quite well too.

  4. Isn’t it ironic that not 1 of these new building ANYWHERE in the city demand residents to ALL sign an agreement where nobody owns an auto??? WTF are people waiting for here, leadership? LOL. Walk the walk and talk the talk and show us all and lead by doing just this. Born and raised here, my quality of life sucks now due to us becoming SF North. People mover here from NYC or Chicago then tell us how it should be or we need to be more like where they came from. Um, guess what: job done. Do you all like sitting in traffic waiting 2-3-4 lights to make it through and intersection? Who planned this garbage? Obviously, banning autos is coming soon. Mick Jaeger sang about this “Under my thumb”.

    1. Under My Thumb is about a relationship between a man and a woman, and was sung by Mick Jagger, not Mick Jaeger. It has nothing to do with the gentrification of a city. All those NYC people, like Howard Schultz, who built a local company into a global behemoth that employs thousands of people, both locally and worldwide. And other transplants like Jeff Bezos, Steve Ballmer, Richard Barton, Spencer Rascoff, etc. You’ve lived here your whole life? What local billion dollar company did you create?

  5. What about all the “Bike entrepreneurs” and “pop up corner pharmacy” businesses in the area. Where are they going to sell heroin and poop now that there is a building to be constructed here? Fully enabled heroin addicts have full rights to take whatever they want, crap anywhere and sell and inject drugs into themselves.
    Where are all my social justice warriors?
    This is an affront to those non accountable dregs on society that consume drugs and steal to consume more drugs.

Leave a Reply