December 11, 2015
As downtown booms will Sodo be next?
By NAT LEVY
Journal Staff Reporter
http://www.djc.com/news/re/12084428.html
The population in and around downtown is expected to increase by more than 50 percent over the next 20 years, according to Gary Johnson, coordinator of Seattle's Center City Strategy.
Downtown and close-in neighborhoods today have about 67,000 residents, and Johnson said the city expects another 38,000 people will move into those areas by 2035, along with an additional 50,000 jobs. Johnson spoke at a Bisnow event Wednesday.
Construction downtown already is booming, with about 12,000 new housing units since 2010, and another 2,600 units expected to open next year. Some people wonder if developers have gone overboard.
Holly Gardner, a vice president at The Schuster Group and a panelist at the Bisnow event, is not one of those people: “We can't build fast enough to meet that (projected) demand.”
Limited land and population growth are part of what led to the rise of South Lake Union and then the Denny Triangle. The next logical place for downtown to expand could be Sodo, the panelists said.
But that may take a while. Most land south of the stadiums is zoned for industrial uses, and the Port of Seattle and other industrial groups want to keep it that way.
The city wants to improve the area around the stadiums while still protecting industrial uses to the south. City planners envision an entertainment-oriented district with more housing and retail in the area bounded by the stadiums, First and Fourth avenues south, and South Holgate Street. The City Council is expected to discuss amending the comprehensive plan next year to make this possible.
“The city believes that we can allow some better, healthier mix of uses in the stadium district without negatively impacting the industrial uses south of Holgate,” Johnson said.
More:
http://www.djc.com/news/re/12084428.html
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