Developer has plans for Northgate

Bellevue-based Wallace Properties Inc. wants to add about 400 apartments and retail space across the street from Northgate Mall, possibly matching the square-foot expansion of Seattle's first indoor shopping center.

With 4 acres it owns near Fifth Avenue Northeast and Northeast Northgate Way, the company has plans for apartment buildings up to five stories tall with ground-floor retail with a total of 100,000 square feet, said Kevin Wallace, general counsel and vice president.

"It's the gateway to the residential area," he said, referring to the property. "It's been ripe for redevelopment for many years."

If the Wallace company receives city approval for its plan, new Northgate-area retail space could double. The Simon Property Group, owner of the Northgate Mall, wants to add 100,000 square feet of retail space to its shopping center.

Wallace said his company has made no final decision about the project, which has entered the city of Seattle's permitting process and will come before a public design meeting Monday.

"Ideally, we would like to start as soon as we can," he said. "But it's a long process to get through the permitting process."

The Wallace project might be the start of another round of long-awaited development in the Northgate area, spurred by the mall's plan to expand.

For 15 years, Northgate Mall's development was delayed by community activists' complaints about its environmental and traffic impact.

Vincent Mullally, managing partner of Northgate Plaza LLC, said his company could redevelop its 207-unit Northgate Apartments to contain up to 700 units.

"It's a lot of land, and that is where the city is headed -- they want density," he said.

Mullally is commissioning studies of the best use of the 7.9-acre property that is underlying the apartments, just north of Northgate Mall on Second Avenue Northeast.

"When we first bought, we contemplated immediate development, but ultimately pulled the plug on the property," said Mullally, whose company decided to manage the apartments until the area's development kinks had been worked out. "There were too many clouds, but we didn't know it would be such a long-term investment."

But now that 17 years have passed since he purchased the property, "Everything is there: the transportation, the shopping, the roadways -- everything is in place," Mullally said. "Breaking the logjam at the mall for that south property was key."

Although his company's specialty is residential development, Mullally is considering including ground floor retail because "the Northgate area lends itself to mixed-use properties."

That project's earliest groundbreaking would be during the winter of 2007, said Mullally, who said his company would seek to work with neighborhood groups and the city.

"It is common knowledge that Northgate has a very active neighborhood group," Mullally said. "They want to participate, and for a project to be successful, you have to listen to them or you will be thwarted."

Jan Brucker, chairwoman of Citizens for a Livable Northgate -- a community organization that lobbies for neighborhood concerns -- believes that "additional development is appropriate." But, she said, the city needs to take on a much larger role guiding traffic mitigation than it normally would because of Northgate Way's extreme congestion.

"The problem we have been having for the last 16 years is very little ability to impact the transportation capacity of our roads while the development pressure is very strong," she said.

Still, some developers say that Northgate will never take off unless it is rezoned for further density.

"The city needs to get development in that area, and maybe one day they will zone it for that," said Jim Potter, the chairman of Kauri Investments Ltd., which owns the 130-apartment Court at Northgate. "Northgate isn't even close to meeting its (density) numbers under the Growth Management Act."

Potter said he tried and failed to redevelop the 4.3-acre property at 11300 Third Ave N.E. to add 110 units, but "by the time they were done with me, I was at 20 units."

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