January 2019
Madison Park Times
Serving East-Central Seattle since 1983
Real Estate
MADISON PARK - WASHINGTON PARK - MADISON VALLEY - DENNY-BLAINE - MADRONA - LESCHI www .M adison P ark T imes . com
Midtown Center redevelopment fails to secure artistic license Design review boards want to know more about heavy art component before clearing superblock project By Brandon Macz
Madison Park Times editor Art may be subjective, but the number of unknowns about how it will work in the latest designs for redeveloping the Central District’s Midtown Center superblock resulted in two review boards shooting down those plans. Responding to community complaints during a July presentation before the East Design Review Board that neither the mixed-use development nor the review board represented the interests of the black community, the EDRB sent developer Lake Union Partners and architecture firm Weinstein A+U back to the drawing board. Lake Union Partners, which has developed The Central and East Union buildings on two other corners of 23rd and Union, plans to construct a seven-story mixed-use
development that would spread about 430 residential units across three buildings on the Midtown superblock. About half of those are proposed at affordable housing levels for incomes between $28,000 and $60,000. LUP hosted two community open houses in October and another in November, and came back with an art program expanded from three areas of the three apartment and retail buildings on its site to eight, including along the building facades at 23rd Avenue and East Union Street, a plaza at 24th and Union and the pedestrian portals leading into a 16,000-square-foot central square, where an originally planned 120-foot-long mural will remain. The second recommendation meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 19, included members of the newly formed Central Area Design Review Board. LUP asked that the board be
Image courtesy of Weinstein A+U The East and Central Area design review boards are making the Midtown Center design team come back for a third recommendation meeting. included, which had been a request from the community during the last review. While the Midtown Center design team made a lot of positive changes in response to feedback received in July, both boards agreed
that the latest design relied so heavily on art that more information is needed, not only about its context, but also how it functions MIDTOWN, Page 11
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