On Thursday night we had our second community meeting with the Central Area LURC, a volunteer group that convenes meeting to discuss new development in the Central Area. The LURC group itself has a wonderful and diverse group of development professionals and committed residents who have earned a “tough but fair” reputation for honest and constructive feedback. We were pleased to be joined by several neighbors who live near the site and who also wanted to give input. Overall, we had about 35 people join.
We presented for the first time our “EDG packet” which we just submitted to the city for review, which you can see embedded below.
We got a lot of great questions and feedback and had a wide ranging discussion. Some of the themes included
- How are we communicating to the neighbors to the imediate north of us who will be most impacted
- How will we integrate the “afro-futurist” theme into the common design vernacular of Seattle and the region
- How to optimize the Cherry St courtyard and its ability to draw in people from the street
- How to meet the intent of the design guidelines for commercial zoning on 22nd, despite us placing residential units there instead of commercial (we believe residential units are better suited for 22nd)
- How to maintain privacy for the residential units on 22nd
- Support for the accessible route into the courtyard and the retail that will be located there, and encouragement to ensure it is “truly accessible” (not to steep, narrow, etc)
- How to mitigage the fact that childcare playground is on the shaded north side of the building
Here’s the final EDG packet we submitted to the city and which we used in our May 27 meeting. Please note that the packet contains three options for the building design, as required. Our preferred option is Option 3.