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Real Estate / Land Use

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Horizon Bank and the fate of Fairhaven Highlands

Posted Mon, Oct 26, 6 a.m.

Preservationists worry that the character of Bellingham's historic neighborhood rides on the FDIC's willingness to enforce its own order restricting a controversial development.

READ MORE 16 COMMENTS

This camp is your camp

Posted Thu, Oct 15, 6 a.m.

Using a state pilot project, the Cascade Land Conservancy has made it possible to preserve historic Hidden Valley Camp for future generations. It's more than a win for holding back sprawl, it also saves an incubator of the Northwest's conservation ethic.

READ MORE 3 COMMENTS

Shiga's Garden: fittingly, a story of sunshine and cooperation

Posted Tue, Oct 13, 6 a.m.

Volunteers, artists, and an absentee landowner are together creating a P-Patch honoring the father of the University District Street Fair.

READ MORE 4 COMMENTS

Welcome to 'Destroy History Month'

Posted Mon, Oct 12, 6 a.m.

September's demolition of state landmarks leaves Washington preservationists reeling.

READ MORE 8 COMMENTS

The Bravern fits right into Bellevue's architectural style

Posted Wed, Oct 7, 6 a.m.

The elaborately designed new Bravern complex is a pastiche of ideas drawn from European public spaces. As architecture, it's all very tasteful, but it lacks whimsy, unpredictability, and Northwest context.

READ MORE 5 COMMENTS

What would Jane Jacobs do about the Viaduct?

Posted Fri, Oct 2, 6 a.m.

The patron saint of livable, walkable cities is being invoked on both sides of the debate over Seattle's Viaduct solution. Would Jacobs be a tunnel supporter, or a surface option fan?

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Bigger lessons in the Green River floodplain

Posted Wed, Sep 30, 6 a.m.

'Flood control is an oxymoron,' one expert says. Maybe, instead of spending so much money trying to control our rivers, we should buy out property owners and let the water run free.

READ MORE 9 COMMENTS

Time to go 'all-in' on tolls

Posted Tue, Sep 22, 6 a.m.

Just putting tolls on the Evergreen Point Bridge is not going to cut it. Instead, the region needs to apply tolls all along the 520 corridor and broadly across our highway system. Here's an encouraging progress report.

READ MORE 8 COMMENTS

Article on the Mercer Mess created a lot of false alarms

Posted Tue, Sep 22, 6 a.m.

A Vulcan spokesperson pleads: no more ill-informed pieces on South Lake Union by John Fox.

READ MORE 20 COMMENTS

A big week for the cottage cult

Posted Mon, Sep 21, 6 a.m.

Backyard cottage housing is a benefit, not a threat, to single family neighborhoods, and in keeping with the values that shaped Seattle. Let's have more.

READ MORE 17 COMMENTS

Six key lessons from Portland's urbanism

Posted Sun, Sep 20, 5:36 p.m.

An expert on cities distills the Portland DNA. Most of all, it's a city that is comfortable with being an urban place.

READ MORE 10 COMMENTS

The bully of Puget Sound

Posted Fri, Sep 18, 6 a.m.

Seattle has a great international brand, but locally, the Emerald City image is tarnished. New leadership could give us a fresh start.

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The failed promise of biotech in South Lake Union

Posted Thu, Sep 17, 6 a.m.

The City during the Nickels years has put a lot of money into building up the sector, but job growth for biotech has fallen far short of the promises.

READ MORE 11 COMMENTS

For some of our homeless, why not managed campgrounds?

Posted Wed, Sep 16, 6 a.m.

Many homeless people don't want to be in shelters or the housing officials think they ought to have. So here's an idea: provide campgrounds and revive trailer parks.

READ MORE 10 COMMENTS

Nickelsism without Nickels

Posted Wed, Sep 16, 6 a.m.

Mayor Nickels forged a grand political alliance, now headless. Will it persist, will the city go back to its familiar feuding ways, or will we move on?

READ MORE 7 COMMENTS

How to craft a better Seattle

Posted Tue, Sep 15, 6 a.m.

The Future Shack awards suggest some design principles that could help us shape the city and region for the better.

READ MORE 8 COMMENTS

The great rookie debate

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 10:03 p.m.

The first face-off of Seattle's mayoral candidates offered contrasts, but no aha! moments.

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Mercer Plan has a new price tag: $290 million

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 6 a.m.

For the first time, cost estimates for the western part, phase II, have surfaced. Adding $100 million to a project that is already short of funding is starting to look like a kind of farewell fling from Mayor Nickels. A critic traces all the funding maneuvers.

READ MORE 18 COMMENTS

Utopia: Are we there yet?

Posted Wed, Sep 9, 9:24 p.m.

An art exhibit in Port Angeles displays creative responses to the Cascadia dream.

READ MORE 4 COMMENTS

Will a new mayor think boldly about planning?

Posted Wed, Sep 9, 6 a.m.

There are plenty of land-use controversies to heat up the election. But some cities are jumping beyond these block-by-block skirmishes and proposing sweeping new forms of zoning and urban design. Our turn?

READ MORE 11 COMMENTS

Other media

Seattle's commercial real estate market is plunging fast In 2008, Seattle was rated tops in the nation. Now it's dropped to 8th. It's as steep a drop as any commercial real estate market in the nation.

Backyard cottages now permitted throughout Seattle City Council okays the program, allowing secondary units on single-family lots, but with many restrictions about size.

B.C.'s great real estate bust Free-spending Albertans helped fuel the boom but there weren't enough of them to buy the increasing number of overpriced houses. Vancouver condos are still pricey but outside the metro area, development after development has gone belly up.

Google launches a service that competes with Zillow The new service provides instant mortgage quotes as well as house price estimates.

Cascadia, Pierce County's largest development, files for Chapter 11 The developers of the 5,000 acre planned community near Bonney Lake say they took the action to prevent bank foreclosure and sale of the property.

Blog posts

MOHAI’s future begins at the Armory

Posted Fri, Nov 6, 6 a.m.

With a new fundraising campaign kicking off tonight, the history museum hopes to be in its new Lake Union digs in 2012.

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The best of Times?

Posted Mon, Oct 12, 6 a.m.

Despite recession, layoffs and white powder, Seattle publisher Frank Blethen is upbeat about his paper and its prospects.

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A respite from water rationing in Bellingham

Posted Tue, Aug 4, 5:26 p.m.

Cooler weather and voluntary conservation saved the day, but the underlying problems with Lake Whatcom remain

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Mandatory water restriction in Bellingham

Posted Thu, Jul 30, 6:25 p.m.

Problems in Lake Whatcom come back to haunt the city, as algae blooms created by shoreline development have clogged the water filtration system. No landscape watering until further notice, the city decrees.

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Next chapters in the Great Transit Debate

Posted Thu, Jul 16, 1:09 p.m.

Turns out there's no parking near the light rail stations, save one in Tukwila. Welcome to the reality of trade-offs.

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Don't mess with Marilyn!

Posted Tue, Jun 30, 3:32 p.m.

There goes the (apathetic) neighborhood

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Signs of livability in Seattle and that other place

Posted Tue, Jun 30, 6 a.m.

More thoughts from the Seattle and Vancouver urban debaters on what makes their cities livable, or not.

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The skinny house scourge

Posted Tue, Jun 23, 8:57 a.m.

And what it tells us about local design problems

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Why is Seattle trying to sack Tacoma?

Posted Wed, Jun 3, 9:40 p.m.

The bidding war over Frank Russell Investments is a classic illustration of greed overcoming regional planning.

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A short class about 'class'

Posted Wed, Jun 3, 6 a.m.

Excuse the term, but here's how the region breaks down in terms of class structure

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