The ground rules were laid out that traffic and parking issues were not going to be discussed at the onset of the March 24 design review board meeting for Harbor Properties Nova apartments set to go in at the southeast corner of 36th Ave s.w. and s.w. Snoqualmie St.

Based on concerns brought up during the public comment phase of the meeting (held at the West Seattle Senior Center), however, parking and traffic are the very issues people are worried about.

Several business owners from that nook of the Fauntleroy Triangle expressed concern that parking is already maxed out in the area. Neighboring businesses to the proposed sight include the YMCA, Merrill Gardens Senior Community, Seattle West Inn and Suites (currently being remodeled) and other apartment complexes.

“Can you tell out how we went from .8 percent parking to .6 percent parking to 0 percent parking it a time period that I don’t think anyone knew we changed from .8?” Jim Sweeney, a property owner in the immediate area of the Nova site asked.

“We could have a thousand units in our West Seattle Triangle with no parking,” Sweeney added.

Scott Kemp, city planner, said, “It’s a shift in the way city council and many of our planners are thinking about the automobile where before we used to say well we’ve got to build all these spaces for all these cars because people are going to need them and want them and have them and now we are thinking that we would like to let the market determine how many car really need to be provided for. We would like to encourage there to be areas of the city which are really transit oriented where people live without having cars, or a percentage of people.”

“That’s the thought, I don’t expect you to agree with it and I’m not sure how much I agree with it but that’s why the changes are happening,” Kemp said.

Sweeney said he was unaware of that change in zoning regulations.

“I just can’t pass up commenting that we are asking about the rapid decrease in the amount of parking required and the response is some guys thought about this in a meeting that nobody heard about then followed that with ‘market driven.’ I’m sorry that’s government driven, not market driven,” a member of the public said.

Another area of concern brought up was the alleyway along s.w. Snoqualmie St. between Merrill Gardens and Nova’s proposed site.

Brian Runberg of Runberg Architecture Group presented three “massing options” at the meeting and said they are leaning towards Massing Option C which he said, although making room for parking is voluntary based on coding, they plan to have below ground parking garage with 37 slots for vehicles. He said the Massing C option would have 62 residential units.

For more information on the difference in Massing proposals and much more on the project, please check out the PDF on the project found here.

The proposed entry point for the underground parking is in alley shared with Merrill Gardens and the motel to the south.

“In that alley you’ve got the entrance to Merrill Gardens parking garage and you’re gonna have the entrance to this new building in the same alley? Plus you’ve got all your utilities like garbage and stuff going down there. Isn’t that a lot of, excuse the term, parking problems?” a manager of a nearby apartment complex said.

“To me the whole project comes down to parking at the end of the day because this presents a huge, huge problem to an already existing one,” he added.

A resident living near Nova’s proposed site said, “As far as being able to activate the alley, that’s a hard thing to do. Is it going to be a one-way alley or a two-way alley? … If it’s a two way alley I wouldn’t even want to walk there, I think it would be too dangerous to even try.”

Although no solutions were proposed at the meeting regarding parking and traffic issues, the board said there will be a future meeting specifically targeted at environmental impacts including parking and traffic.

With regards to the actual building proposed by Runberg Architecture, the response was positive from the review board and public.

Runberg said they are currently leaning towards the “Massing C Option” which is residential only (no ground floor retail like Harbor’s Link Apartments).

“At this point we are doing this with one floor below the height limit and proposing it as single use residential,” Runberg said. “Worst case scenario we are somewhere around 10 feet under the allowable height (the proposed height is 65 feet) which we feel is more of an appropriate scale given the context of the neighborhood …”

In accordance with guidelines set out by the West Seattle Triangle Advisory Group (which you can read more about here), Runberg said the landscaping around the building will be community-friendly with recessed entries, promotion of human activity by setting the building back from the street, landscaping the ground level similar to Harbor’s Link apartments and creating public space at the corners and reinforcing the height of neighboring buildings by keeping Nova at four stories instead of the allowable five.

For additional information on the Nova project, check out the Herald article Harbor Properties held meeting on “Nova” apt. proposal.