Development proposed for heart of Greenwood

Instead of golden arches, the plan would provide a new one-way road from First Avenue Northwest to Greenwood Avenue that would be lined with restaurants and ground-floor retail space beneath 44 apartments.

In an attempt to capture the shopping dollars of Greenwood's increasingly young and professional residents, Greenwood Shopping Center Inc. has crafted a development that would act as a corridor between the Fred Meyer site and Greenwood Avenue.


This drawing depicts the proposed apartment/retail development on a new private road north of North 85th Street. It is part of a larger planned complex.

The company owns the Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market sites, too, but the proposal offers no changes to those two properties.

Past proposals have included an expansion of Fred Meyer that would have included below-ground parking and a Seattle library branch. (The library has since been built farther south on Greenwood.)

Although the controversial Fred Meyer proposal remains active in the city's records, there are no plans to move forward on it, according to Gary Brunt, the property manager for Greenwood Shopping Center.

"The expansion of our Greenwood store to include food is a goal, but we have no specifics because we are still in the process of working out the process with the landlord," Fred Meyer spokeswoman Melinda Merrill has said. "It's a goal, but it's a little ways out."

But where the asphalt now stretches north of the Bartell Drug and Blockbuster buildings, the developers -- with architect Michael Whalen -- are planning a three-story building with 44 apartments on its top two stories. The apartments would be mostly one-bedroom units with balconies, with a few studios and two-bedrooms, plus a roof garden and covered parking. In all, the project would offer 287 parking spaces.

"I would rather see more parking than the minimum requirements," Brunt said. "From a retail perspective, that's what the retail tenants want."

Greenwood rests on a bog, and past developments have caused houses to sink and sidewalks to buckle. Brunt removed all of the below-ground parking in the plan in response to community concerns.

"We have lessened the density of the project since its initial conception," said Barry Leahy, consultant for Greenwood Shopping Center. "We hope you'll find we've been sensitive -- we don't want to cause any bad, long-term effects."

That, in turn, lessened the amount of housing units that could be constructed during the first phase -- although future developments would add more residential units where the houses south of North 87th Street between First Avenue Northwest and Palatine Avenue North now stand.

The proposal was well-received Wednesday morning, when a meeting to review its design was attended by Michael McGinn, the president of the Greenwood Community Council, and Ed Medeiros, the president of the Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce, among others.

The drawings that were available are not the final architectural design, the developers say. But they do include awnings and hanging signs, as well as plans to wrap all of the new development with landscaping and trees.

The developers hope to break ground within a year and seek financing and tenants. They expect construction to take two years to complete.

The height of the three-story retail and residential building along the new private road (tentatively called Greenwood Lane) remains in line with the community's wishes -- no canyon, no tunnel.

The Bartell and Blockbuster buildings (including the Hancock Fabrics, Thriftko and Top Ten Toys) would remain in place.

Brunt believes that restaurants are what is needed along Greenwood Lane, although Medeiros worries about the competition to Greenwood's existing restaurant scene.

"I just hope that it will provide more variety for shopping in the downtown Greenwood core area, like you would see in the U Village or Fremont," Medeiros said. "In Greenwood, we have an up-and-coming area with more and more young professionals."

In 2003, a study of the 2000 Census by the city's Department of Design, Construction and Land Use found that 53 of the Greenwood area's 840 households were living in poverty. But since then -- despite the post-9/11 economic downturn that Medeiros blamed for the area's high business turnover rate -- Seattle's booming housing market has pushed more home buyers north into Greenwood.

"If they have a good mix, it is not going to keep middle-income people from shopping there," Medeiros said. "There has been more stability in that downtown area -- and as long as Fred Meyer is an anchor there, it provides opportunities for all kinds of shopping."

With the opening of Olive You and the Green Bean Coffeehouse, the business community clustered around the intersection of North 85th and Greenwood seems primed for upward mobility.

But Greenwood Shopping Center has not yet begun speaking with specific tenants and does not know what the final mix will look like.

"Thumbs up to opening up that area," said McGinn, referring to the Greenwood Lane. McGinn pushed for environmentally friendly building in order to brand the development for Seattle's eco-conscious consumers.

Scott Kemp, the city planner assigned to the project, said the next meeting for the project will be scheduled in one to two months. An upcoming traffic review will be an important part of assigning the project its master use permit, he said.

"What we saw was the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people, and what's coming out of that is a development that can be beneficial to the community," said Marty Spiegel, the Greenwood Hardware manager and a 12-year Greenwood resident.

"We'll see -- it's never over 'til it's over, you know?"

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