Downtown Seattle Building Boom Triggers an Initiative to Limit Growth

Once a little city with clean, if rainy, skies and clear mountain views, fast-growing Seattle has become a metropolis with the usual smog and traffic jams. Some people are starting to protest.

A citizens group turned in 18,000 signatures on an initiative to limit the height and density of downtown buildings, and debate is gearing up before a vote on May 16.

The building boom is easy to see, and much of it has occurred in the last decade. Three skyscrapers are under construction, and permit applications for three more were submitted before a recently imposed six-month moratorium on downtown growth.

Buildings Top 50 Stories

The 55-story Washington Mutual Tower was completed last year, bumping the 50-story 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza to third tallest. No. 1 is the West Coast’s tallest building, the 76-story black-glass Columbia Seafirst Center built in 1985, before downtown zoning went into effect. A dozen office towers are 30 stories or more, and all but three were opened in the 1980s.

The thousands of workers in these buildings, plus tourists and shoppers, make downtown Seattle a lively place.

Fishmongers, farmers’ stalls, crafts booths and restaurants compete shoulder-to-shoulder at the historic, hectic Pike Place Market.

Redevelopment is continuing at the downtown waterfront. And the downtown retail core, with major flagship department stores and a variety of small businesses, recently settled one 30-year-old land-use debate with the opening of Westlake Center, a new mall of expensive shops and a 24-story office tower.

Concern for Pollution

Supporters of the Citizens Alternative Plan to Downtown Development, or CAP, say overdevelopment in downtown will mean more pollution as more people commute by car and more box-like apartment buildings replace single-family houses and dilute the flavor of old city neighborhoods.

CAP wants to limit building height to about 40 stories in the office district. New office floor space would be limited to 500,000 square feet a year for the next five years and 1 million square feet a year from 1995 through 1999. After that, the ceiling would be lifted unless re-imposed by the City Council.

By contrast, nearly 6 million square feet of downtown office space is newly completed, under construction or has received city permits, said Virginia Galle, a City Council member and CAP supporter.

At the present rate of growth, in 10 years about 67,000 new office workers are expected to occupy 52,000 new households and make 29,000 more car trips daily into downtown, she said.

Formula for Size

There is no height limit under the city’s current zoning plan. A building’s size is worked out according to a formula based on the size of the site, with extra height allowed in exchange for such amenities as plazas, retail space and day-care centers.

CAP supporters insist that they want growth, but not at a high cost to the environment and the neighborhoods.

“We’re not anti-growth in the traditional sense,” says Patrick Strosahl, a jeweler and president of Vision Seattle, which supports CAP. “We’re really much more into shaping growth so that it produces and accentuates the livability of the city.”

Some participants in the growth debate argue that the city needs controls that are more lenient than the CAP initiative.

Mayor Charles Royer presented a plan of his own that would limit office towers to about 50 stories. It would stiffen the zoning code, but not as much as CAP would.

Would Encourage Height

Royer also wants to adjust the bonus system used to allow developers to build higher. His plan would shift the emphasis of the bonuses from street-level amenities to housing, human services and open space.

The Downtown Seattle Assn., a group of developers and business executives, contends that the 1985 zoning law is strict enough.

John Gilmore, president of the association, says downtown growth makes more sense than spreading development into neighborhoods and suburbs. A downtown provides a focal point for a rapid-transit system, something Seattle needs, he said. And Seattle must grow, he contended. “We’re having children like every other part of the country, and there’s got to be jobs.”

Folke Nyberg, a professor of urban planning and architecture at the University of Washington, agreed that Seattle’s location on the Pacific Rim means that it will grow, but disagreed that concentrated downtown growth is good.

‘Physical Constraints’

Seattle has an “hourglass” figure, squeezed between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, he said. “So there are some very limited physical constraints that make it imperative that we have an effective transportation solution before we allow growth to happen, and this was not done.”

A better way to grow, Nyberg said, would be in decentralized clusters throughout the region. People in these smaller cities would live near their jobs and go to downtown Seattle mainly for conventions and cultural events.

Instead, unplanned growth can be seen in declining air quality, traffic congestion and more homelessness caused by a lack of affordable housing, he said.

Seattle, which “has been a very livable city,” he said, failed to learn from other cities’ mistakes. Asked why, he replied: “It’s all greed.”

Prefers Hearings

Gilmore, of the Downtown Seattle Assn., said that the city’s 1985 downtown zoning was the product of four years of debate and that any changes should be made through more hearings and City Council votes. The American Institute of Architects’ local chapter agrees.

CAP supporters, however, say their plan is reasonable and timely.

According to Strosahl, San Francisco needed to enact stiffer downtown limits in 1986 because it waited too long, until the cost of housing went way up and the character of the city changed.

San Francisco voters approved the limits after a building spree in which 25 million square feet of office space was added between 1979 and 1984. The high-rises nearly blocked out all the sun in San Francisco’s financial district.

San Francisco’s voter-approved plan limits new office space to 475,000 square feet for several years for a city with a population of 690,000. That compares to CAP’s limits of 500,000 square feet for five years and 1 million square feet for the next five in a city of 490,000.

Questions Motives

Gilmore suggests that people who signed CAP did not really want to limit growth but were just annoyed with traffic disruption downtown caused by construction of a downtown bus tunnel and a state convention center. The initiative text was long and complicated, and people probably did not read it, he said.

What’s more, the petition had just 329 more signatures than it needed.

Strosahl thinks voters will pass the initiative, but he expects a highly financed campaign against it.