Early Design Guidance (EDG) 

The West Design Review Board will meet on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 at 8:00pm at

the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Ave W, in Room 1. 

This is the first of two design review meetings. At this initial meeting, the Board will listen to a presentation by the Safeway Project team regarding their proposed development, hear public comments, and make recommendations.

The focus is on the buildings' massing, materials, and other design elements such as architectural context, street level interaction, and open space per the city-wide guidelines and the Upper Queen Anne guidelines (developed by our community).

Environmental issues such as parking and traffic are not addressed by the design review process.

Here are links to the City's design review process and the Upper Queen Anne Guidelines:

http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SDCI/About/DesignGuidelinesPrimer.pdf

http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SDCI/About/UpperQueenAnneDG2013.pdf  

Here's the link to the Safeway Project Team's proposal (Project No. 3033807) as submitted to the City:

http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/AppDocs/GroupMeetings/DRProposal3033807AgendaID7473.pdf

While this is a lot of information to absorb, we feel it's important to learn as much as you can about the design review process and the team's proposal so that you can make your comments relevant to the design guidelines and as succinct as possible. You may consider focusing on one or two aspects of the design you consider to be most critical. The time allotted to public comments is likely to be only 20 minutes.

You may also submit more detailed written comments through Tuesday, October 1st to PRC@seattle.gov. You may want to bring brief and easily read written comments to the meeting as well in case it's possible to hand a copy off to the Design Review Board before the meeting begins.

Should you have any questions or want further information, you can contact Joseph Hurley, the Design Review Planner for this project, at 206-684-8278 or at joseph.hurley@seattle.gov

SAFEWAY PROJECT COMMUNITY MEETINGS

The Safeway Redevelopment Project is moving ahead. Maria Barrientos and her team will be presenting their latest design drafts to the community on two dates with the hope that you can make it to one of these meetings:

*Thursday, September 5th before the Queen Anne Community Council's Land Use Review Committee (LURC). The meeting is at 7:00pm in the dining room of the Queen Anne Manor, 100 Crockett St.

*Tuesday, September 10th at 6:00pm at the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Ave W

Maria has written:

We have been spending the last 3 months working on the design of this project.

There have been so many items to coordinate such as: working with SDCI and SDOT on transportation access, truck entries and loading, grade related access to work out, the size of the store and how the business works inside that affects the design with locations of elevators, loading docks, exit stairs, etc.,  then we spent 2 months on working out the massing for the upper floors.  We looked at over a dozen ways to get the massing to work for us and for the neighborhood and the visual impacts at the edges.

One thing I can say is that we are allowed to build an FAR of 5.75, which translates to 455,000 square feet of building area and 400,000 square feet of residential units.  With the proposed setbacks we are contemplating, we are ending up with 250,000 square feet of residential units.  I know that still sounds like a lot, but it is far below what we could build.   We are also working on our draft EDG package to send to the city next month.  We now have enough meaningful information to come back and share with all of you our progress and get your feedback on the design evolution.

Warning: we are just in schematic design and there are many unresolved design issues.  This is a work in progress, so don’t expect the design to be totally flushed out.

We hope we can have a Design Review Board Meeting to review the Early Design Guidance package and receive confirmation on our preferred scheme sometime in late September or early October.  It is not yet scheduled.

We plan to have our plans advanced enough to submit a Master Use Permit in late December, so there remains time to provide input.

Please save the date in your calendar for one of these dates (or both).

As always, if you have feedback, question, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me direct.  Best is my email at maria@barrientosryan.com

A giveBIG THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY

Craig asked, "Won't you be my neighbor?"

And You responded with a resounding "YES!"

First, You donated $3,600--which was immediately matched dollar-for-dollar from a fund created by Queen Anne Real Estate, hauteyoga queen anne, Emerald Bay Equity, the Lawson Sarkowsky Family, Beth Bunnell, Teri Fischer, Bill Shook, Amy Eisenfeld, and Wayne Winder.

Then,You continued to giveBIG…right up to the end. When the day was over, You had made sure we reached our $10,000 goal!!

We thank You for being special neighbors to the gardens. Your giveBIG donations will be used to truck water to the gardens, hand water the plants, and professionally maintain the beds.

YOU GAVE EARLY, 

YOU GAVE THROUGHOUT THE DAY,

                   AND YOU gaveBIG!!

"You're the best neighbors a scarecrow could have."   Craig

Along with Denny, Ellen, Judy, Kathy, Laura, Margaret, Sheila

It Takes A Cadre Of Neighbors

IT TAKES A CADRE OF NEIGHBORS 

The gardens along Queen Anne Avenue at Galer, Boston, and McGraw are a 

unique neighborhood asset.

It takes a cadre of good neighbors to keep them in tiptop shape. 

Won’t you be a good neighbor, too?!!?

This year, Queen Anne Real Estate, hauteyoga, Emerald Bay Equity, The Lawson Sarkowsky Family, Beth Bunnell, Teri Fischer, Bill Shook, Amy Eisenfeld, and Wayne Winder created a matching fund that will double the impact of your gift. The first $3,600 of donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar. That’s $7,200 toward our $10,000 goal.

So what are you waiting for?? Preschedule your donation NOW or giveBIG on Wednesday, May 8^th anytime between the hours of midnight to 11:59pm.

Remember, 

 giveEarly, giveOften, giveBIG!!!

FOR THE GARDENS

The Board: Denny, Ellen, Judy, Kathy, Laura, Margaret, Sheila, Wayne

Safeway on Queen Anne Redevelopment Public Meeting

Queen Anne Community Center, Room 1  6:00-7:00pm

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Hosted by barrientosRYAN development company, this is a general meeting to gather the community's feedback on their planned redevelopment of the Safeway site at 

2100 Queen Anne Ave N.

This is the development team's second informal meeting. The team includes Maria Barrientos, Runberg Architecture Group, and Hewitt Landscape. They will introduce the Safeway Project and themselves, present their ideas and give you the opportunity to offer yours.

This is one of the most significant projects to be proposed for Queen Anne Avenue. If you were unable to attend the December meeting, we encourage you to attend this one. If you attended the December meeting and have fresh thoughts to convey, please attend and share them.
                                                                                     Margaret Okamoto, PPQA Board

WHITE is the magical color of the day. Even the gardens along Queen Anne Avenue are sporting it! Hope you’ve been finding time to enjoy all this beautiful snow.

While life has slowed down somewhat, we’d like to visit the topic of the Safeway Project to provide some background information about PPQA’s role in the redevelopment of this property.


PPQA’S INVOLVEMENT WITH THE SAFEWAY PROJECT 

By Kathy King
PPQA Board Member


HISTORIC OVERVIEW 

The major goal of PPQA is to promote and oversee the Queen Anne Avenue Streetscape Master Plan which was finalized in 2006. This document is the outcome of three community meetings held to identify community preferences for the improvement of QA Avenue from Galer to McGraw. These meetings were conducted by Zimmer-Gunsul-Frasca Partnership. This urban design firm was selected by PPQA and their work was funded by a grant from the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

The resulting vision became the Queen Anne Avenue Streetscape Master Plan. It reflects the community’s desire for an attractive and safe commercial core that includes:

• Gathering places with seating
• Safe sidewalks
• Street-level vegetation
• Public art
• Pedestrian-level lighting
• No litter
• Clear street signs
• Human scale store fronts

Whenever a new development is proposed for the commercial core along QA Avenue, a representative of the PPQA board attends meetings of the QA Community Council’s Land Use Review Committee (LURC) to make sure that developers are aware of the above elements of the Streetscape Master Plan. When comments about the project are requested by the City, we analyze how well the project reflects the Streetscape Master Plan and also submit suggestions and examples of preferred changes.

PPQA found the first go-round with the initial group hired by Safeway to redevelop the block to be a frustrating experience because we did not seem to be getting commitments for significant pedestrian amenities such as seating, landscaping, and setbacks from the sidewalk. Safeway parted ways with this group mid 2018.


2018: barrientosRYAN URBAN REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT FIRM 

The new team began planning in December, 2018 and is a breath of fresh air! Maria Barrientos of BarrientosRYAN (maria@barrientosryan.com) is the developer and has taken the initiative in requesting input from the community. In December two members of the PPQA board met with her, Kris Snider of Hewitt Landscape Architecture, and Brian Runberg, of Runberg Architecture Group, to discuss how the project can best embody the spirit of the Streetscape Master Plan. They expressed enthusiasm for the principals of good urban design embodied in the Master Plan. The discussion around pedestrian amenities such as providing a significant seating courtyard, building setbacks from the sidewalk, plentiful landscaping, and possible increased connections between the store interior and exterior went very well.


THE CITY’S INTEREST AND WHERE THE COMMUNITY CAN HAVE ITS SAY 

Legally a developer has the right to build up to the maximum height allowed on the property by the City’s zoning code—there is nothing the community can do about that. The City also determines how many curb cuts will be allowed for cars and trucks entering the site and where they can be placed—not negotiable. There are constraints--but our community can have significant say about many other aspects of a development. For instance, to reduce the ‘canyon effect’ of a tall building, we can ask that the upper stories of the building be stepped back to allow more light to reach the ground. The architects expressed a desire to do this.

Uniquely, three of the key players working on this project are Queen Anne residents. Each of them has expressed a desire to create a mixed-use project that they and their neighborhood can be proud of. We feel this development is now on a very positive track.


CURRENT STATUS 
You can be assured that the PPQA board will continue to stay involved with this expansive and significant development as it is being designed. If we think changes should be made, we will offer suggestions we feel will make it more community friendly. We will speak up for our neighborhood. Stay tuned.