`Urban Village’ Concept Merits Consideration
In downtown Seattle, a 400-acre tract has been staked out between Lake Union, the Space Needle, the freeway and the business core for a prototype 21st-century community.
The concept of the proposed project, Seattle Commons, is that of a self-sufficient “urban village” complete with jobs and housing and shops and parks. Created in one fell swoop. In the middle of the city.
It was described by Spokane developer Don Barbieri in a brainstorming session recently with city planners on the challenges facing this community’s fast-changing central business district.
The Seattle Commons concept was developed by a task force of visionaries from a wide spectrum of interests and expertise.
Barbieri, who also is active in downtown Seattle, highlighted elements of the Seattle Commons plan which may have broad application here as well.
Seattle, he observed, is a few years ahead of Spokane in growth management planning, which essentially focuses on addressing the impacts of urban sprawl on the inner city.
The Seattle Commons strategies delve into how to:
Create livable downtown neighborhoods.
Add jobs in the neighborhoods for residents.
Expand affordable housing for all income levels.
Use federal and state grants, private donations, and community redevelopment financing in planning and execution.
Improve transit and foot-traffic systems by adding local shuttles, bike paths, pedestrian promenades and “green streets” to lace urban-village neighborhoods together with each other and with outlying communities.
And, in the final analysis, make mass-transit shuttles and pedestrians the drivers of downtown instead of wall-to-wall automobiles.
Spokane’s leading developer sees a fundamental conflict between a demand for ever-more downtown parking and a need to achieve other goals at the heart of the urban village concept.
Barbieri suggested that Spokane emulate Seattle in making an earnest effort to pool existing parking spaces for dual use - daytime/nighttime, residential/commercial.
Seattle also is going all out to assist and stimulate construction of a mix of downtown housing for all income levels.
And Seattle is greatly expanding downtown shuttle transit, which Barbieri also advocates.
A 10-minute shuttle ride to a destination in the downtown area, says the developer, is as good as having your own car.
He suggested downtown shuttle links with the county courthouse complex, Gonzaga University campus, Riverpoint higher education campus, Davenport arts and entertainment district, a redeveloped sector of the southwest core, and the South Hill hospital district.
And he called on city planners to take the lead in establishing an agenda for action.
Barbieri said his company is developing a full range of housing in the central business district. The goal is to add 25 to 35 downtown units a year.
Meantime, Barbieri thinks city government may have to lend developers a hand in recycling the most extensive remaining pockets of downtown decay.
Large blocks suitable for major development do not exist in ramshackle districts which bracket the business district. The reason for this, Barbieri says, is that owners of key parcels are simply sitting tight, unwilling even to consider selling.
“At some point,” says Barbieri, “we’re going to need to pull those together.” And to do that the city will probably have to exercise its power of public domain to condemn the parcels of landowners who refuse to sell.
But suppose city leaders did target strategic blocks and assembled the land. Then they called for innovative plans to create a mix of housing and neighborhood services and commercial uses. And they auctioned off blighted tracts for redevelopment along the lines of an urban village.
“I’m not so sure,” said the developer, “there is anything wrong with that.”
Me either.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review