Assume (conservatively) 500sqft per office and retail user, 1 car per residential unit and 1 car for every 2 hotel rooms. They're still nearly 900 parking spaces shy. I don't see how that couldn't be catastrophic at all.The latest plan, which Crescent officials said is still early, shows the tower will have 1,200 residential units, 167,150 square feet of office and retail space, and 150 hotel rooms and underground parking for 750 vehicles.
Someone decided at some point that it wasn't important for new developments in Seattle to have much (or any) parking. In some places this ok, the transit is decent and there's a lot of things within walking distance. In other places it's not ok. Our transit system as a whole is insufficient. While there are plenty of things it does right, there are too many things it does wrong. And there's a consistent problem of getting enough funding. Each time a new ballot measure comes up to add light rail or add bus service, you get a huge outcry of "just build more roads." The problem is, there's no room for more roads. The city is situated on a narrow strip of land between Puget Sound and Lake Washington with the densest parts of the city falling in the narrowest parts. There's also the fact that building more roads or more lanes is incapable of solving the problem. Demand will increase far faster so that by the time the new lanes are complete, there's an even more severe traffic problem. Then you have an us vs them mentality in the state where it's the rural areas vs the city of Seattle which further complicates funding. And you have an American populace only slightly more willing than the average American to give up on or reduce their use of a personal vehicle. But back to this building. It's not too far from the city's only light rail line and major bus thoroughfare and not a terrible walk from stores, restaurant, jobs, etc.
I don't know how old you are or how long you've lived there, but when I was a junior in college KC Metro fired the guy who took Seattle from 20th to 10th in the nation and replaced him with the guy who took Boston from 5th to dead last. Then there's the fact that Metro's "triple mode" buses came in 550lbs heavier than the city's weight requirements for surface streets. End result? They changed the law. Then there's the fact that King County is one of the only counties in the nation that allows you to run studded tires when there isn't, you know, ice on the roads. I do enjoy watching Eastern Washington going "we'll secede!" every eight years and watching Western Washington go "go ahead! We pay for 70% of your infrastructure!" I'll take your word on the location. I stopped really living in Seattle back in 2007 and back in 2007, it would have been a stone cold clusterfuck to add that much population to that spot.
I'm certainly younger than you but I was born in the area and have lived here my whole life. The number of years I've actually paid attention to any of that is probably fewer than for you. 40 years ago voters turned down a transit package that would have received 75% of its funding from the federal government and would be been completely built by 1985. Most of the opposition centered around the stupid idea that "if you don't build it, they won't come." That somehow NOT building a proper transit system would discourage people from moving to the area. And yeah, fuck studded tires. It's mostly older drivers and soccer moms that use them though. And yeah, the ongoing comedy between the two halves of the state is quite entertaining. The east half complains about all the money they put into "infrastructure they'll never use" and then beg for money to build highways that see fewer cars in a year than a Seattle highway sees in a week.
Parking is miserable there. Not only that, they're nuking two parking structures to put in the building. Both parking structures serve the existing tallest building in Seattle, the Columbia Tower. And then, of course, there's the fact that of the two major roads through Seattle, one viaduct is being replaced by the most star-crossed tunnel since Boston's Big Dig and the other crosses through the convention center, thereby guaranteeing it will never be any bigger than it already is. You can't erect a structure in Los Angeles county without two parking spaces on site. Put it this way - Seattle built a tunnel for a subway, but ran out of money for the subway. So then they put buses in it. Then they decided maybe they'd actually try to build a subway and the bus system said "fuck you, our tunnel" so no subway. Meanwhile, the approach Seattle takes to public works projects is so pathetic and overwrought that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Wait just a damn minute here. HOW are they going to make a tunnel like that in... Seattle of all places? Seattle is sitting on a faulted mess of bedrock worse than L.A. I have no doubt that the engineers can work with it, but fuck being in that tunnel when a 6.0 hits. Edit just read the wiki articles. 2001 was the earthquake. That was two years after I worked on a fishing boat that docked there. Looks like they are going to make the waterfront a destination like they did out here to the Ohio River, which will be nice once it is done. But tunnels in active fault zones freak me out.
Wow. We paid a company to paint a major Interstate bridge. They took the money and bailed. Did not even do the pre-engineering work. Instead of suing them, arresting them or you know trying to get the cash back, the state doubled down and paid a friend of the governor to hire a company to paint the bridge under questionable terms. One of the terms was a demand to scrub the rust and scale off the bridge. The second company, now doing the actual work, found out that scrubbing the rust and scale would weaken the bridge and wanted to go in and treat the rust to make everything stronger and more corrosion resistant. The state bucked at the cost increase so company 2 waited out the terms of the contract and walked away... WITH FULL PAYMENT. Company three came in with federal cash and finished the job. Add into this whole mess was a fear, found with I think company one, that the paint they originally used was full of lead and lead additives and they did not want to pay to prevent all that lead and heavy metals to go into the Ohio River. Note that they did not include the environmental concerns in the original bids. They ended up spending almost as much on the repaint as it would have cost to make a whole new bridge across the river. http://www.kentuckyroads.com/kennedy_bridge_painting/ This is before we get into the 20+ year fight to get a whole new bridge to increase traffic load across the river. This project was fought by 10 wealthy families that did not want a new bridge on their side of town and played every single trick they could including marking a few large homes as nationally protected historical properties to prevent them from being harmed by new highway construction.
Fuck that tunnel, the constant construction on I-5 and 167, the lack of lighting on any of the roads and highways, the lack of good public transit options, and most of all those god forsaken HOV lanes.
Okay first thing: There has never been a time 167 hasn't sucked. There will never be a time 167 won't suck. 167 is the suck magnet for all of puget sound. There are worse roads in the world, but there are none worse in King, Snohomish or Pierce counties. Except maybe the 2. Next thing: You're down there in Redneckistan, son. it's never gonna get better. Seattle, by comparison, is lit like a goddamn jewel. Spend 7 years in LA and tell me WA doesn't illuminate the fuck out of its roads. Finally: Ever been stuck on a bus that didn't know there was a parade going down Hollywood Blvd on Halloween? I have. Things can always be shittier. Trust me.
Seattle has a lot of tunnels, you'd be surprised. The big issue with this one is that they decided to bore it with a single tube rather than a smaller tube for each direction of traffic. So they're using the largest tunnel boring machine ever built, and it's straight from the factory untested. Then it ran into... something. They've never really announced a convincing answer for what happened. So then they had to dig a pit to haul the tbm up to the surface and fix it.
Most of Seattle's tunnels are cut and cover, though. That allows you to bank and stuff. I-90? Cut'n'cover. 99 under downtown? Cut'n'cover. The drilling process they're using is the same one they used for the Brightwater conveyance corridor and that didn't go so smoothly.