This is the story of two buildings. Both are unloved by many of their neighbors, both share the same address. Given Seattle’s rapid growth, with blocks razed and remade within years, they've come to represent a pivot point in the city’s transformation. Because of these buildings, preservationists and opponents of deep changes in neighborhoods – particularly historic ones – are realizing they may have fewer tools at their disposal.
Along Seattle’s once and future waterfront, a clash has emerged between the city’s heritage and its path forward, centered around 316 Alaskan Way South.
Enshrined in the city’s municipal code is a bit of vague language, meant to prevent neighborhoods from becoming a schizophrenic mishmash of building styles and heights: “Exterior building facades shall be of a scale compatible with surrounding structures.” This can refer to a number of concerns, from window width to how “bulky” the building looks. But its central issue is the stature of a proposed building compared with its surroundings.
The Pioneer Square Preservation Board has referenced this idea of scale throughout the past year, as they considered a proposed 120-foot-tall residential building on the corner of Alaskan Way South and South Jackson Street. As its name implies, the board was created to preserve “Seattle’s First Neighborhood," which is on the National Register of Historic Places. After numerous meetings and considerable back-and-forth with developers, the board voted 7-1 to nix the proposal, declaring it a poor fit with the surrounding area, given that nearby structures are only about half its size or less.
“I think what people are responding to when they say ‘out-of-scale’ is that you’re losing some of the finer grain, deeper experiences of pedestrians as they’re walking through a block,” says Dean Kralios, vice-chair of the preservation board and architect at Seattle-based SMR Architects. “I think when you have a historic district, you have to look at compatibility on a broad scale.”
Two weeks after their July 15 vote, however, the board received an extremely rare smackdown. Seattle’s newly appointed Department of Neighborhoods director, Kathy Nyland – a former policy advisor to Mayor Ed Murray – overturned their decision, giving developers the green light despite the board’s near-complete objection.
In an article on Nyland’s move, Seattle Weekly reported that she refused to respond to emails and phone calls asking for an explanation. Nyland calls this a mischaracterization, and describes herself as an open book on this issue.
The preservation board’s vote simply represented a non-binding opinion, she explains. The section of Seattle’s building code referring to “scale” is vague to the point of meaninglessness.
“I think the issue of scale is all subjective and how people interpret it,” says Nyland. Pressed multiple times on whether a building can be out-of-scale while within height limits for its zone, she says scale isn’t a worthy consideration to her, given how “fuzzy” its definition is. There are defined height limits in the city’s code. The approval of buildings “will go to what’s allowable under height limits. That’s the bottom line.”
