DISQUS

Urbnlivn: Update on Pine and Belmont - UPDATED

  • CG · 1 year ago
    It almost doesn't matter whether Murray Franklyn's Pine + Belmont project ends up being condos or rental apartments. Either way, it seems clear it is slated to be dreck.

    Don't forget that the Murray Franklyn designer, Weber + Thompson, is also responsible for the monstrosity at 700 Broadway East, in the heart of Capitol Hill. That apartment building has cheap tanning salons and pizza shops as its retail tenants, foreshadowing Murray Franklyn's plans at Pine + Belmont. Gee, what nice successors to the beloved neighborhood bars and shops that Murray Franklyn evicted.

    Retail aside, what can we expect re the Pine + Belmont building design? Again, using the experience of the 700 Broadway East project, we should be braced for super crap. Here's a snip from the Seattle P-I architectural review of April 12, 2004:

    "Designed by Weber + Thompson, the new apartment and retail building acknowledges the significance of the site by terminating the north end of Broadway with a curved wall, but falls apart in a cacophony of shapes, details and cheap materials.

    It's not the most egregious design in town, but it is a prime example of how mediocre architecture can drain Seattle's vitality and saps our souls."

    Murray Franklyn and Weber + Thompson are masters of the "soul sapping" school of exploiting a neighborhood's hipness by building a project more suitable to a nowheresville like Tukwila than the Pine/Pike corridor. Of course, Murray Franklyn doesn't give a damn about a neighborhood's soul when it thinks it'll get more spec profit out of a hip neighborhood than a suburb.

    So, good for gadfly Dennis Saxman for trying to hold the city accountable in its permitting process. Why have neighborhood design standards, like those for Pine/Pike, that are supposed to engender vital urban development, and then go ahead and approve the crap coughed up by Murray Franklyn?
  • j blue · 1 year ago
    Carl, you need to calm down and take your meds now, everything will be all right.
  • uptown · 1 year ago
    J blue, if you have something to add to the conversation, please do it. Cheap shots don't cut it anymore.
  • citizena · 3 months ago
  • citizena · 3 months ago
    BTW
    CG is expressing a notion that so many of us feel.
    Seattle can become as ugly as Whitecenter or Bellevue if the city doesn't maintain the historic architecture that makes this city beautiful.
    J Blue, there's a great quote that applies to you in particular.

    "Originality is the one thing that unoriginal minds can't find a use for."

    - John Stuart Mill