A project at the Olympic Athletic Club is underway that will add a six-story hotel and parking to the side annex area of the historic building.

The proposed structure has 63 hotel rooms and 38 spaces for parking -- an addition of 16,000 square feet for the athletic club.

The planned site is the annex at 5301 Leary Ave. N.W. It was built in 1980 and is part of a building complex connected to the Olympic Athletic Club: a three-story building on Ballard Avenue Northwest. The overall plan is to replace the annex with the new structure. Skidmore Janette is the architect for the project.

The Department of Planning and Development held an early design guidance meeting early last December to discuss design considerations.

OAC owner, Jim Riggle, is part of a group that in 2013 opened a 29-room boutique hotel on the same block, at 5214 Ballard Ave. N.W. The hotel would share underground parking with the new structure.

The OAC would like to qualify for the Seattle's Living Building Challenge pilot ordinance -- which is set to expire in June of 2016 -- in order to gain an extra 20 feet in height for the structure. Plans are to construct solar panels, thermal exchange for water heating, a green roof and rainwater storage and treatment.

Seattle's Living Building Challenge aims to establish goals for developers to “generate all of their own energy with renewable resources, that capture and treat all of their water, and operate efficiently with maximum beauty.”

In exchange developers are granted departures from the city building code.

In order to qualify for the Seattle's Living Building Challenge pilot ordinance developers must achieve Living Building Challenge full certification or achieve at least three of the seven Petals Recognition standards: beauty, equity, energy, health, materials, site and water.

For energy, developers must reduce total energy usage by 25 percent. For water, they must bring down the building water usage by 75 percent, not including the harvest rainwater volumes, which must be least 50 percent of the stormwater on site.

After the design meeting last December, there were at least two Ballard residents who wrote letters for design consideration.

Mike Strickler, owner of Canal Station #607, a condominium across the street to the north of the OAC annex, questions whether the OAC plans meet the standards of the Livable Building Challenge to obtain the extra 20 feet in height.

He wrote to the DPD that the extra height would obstruct views from his building, which he says are valued at $40,000. He questions whether King County Assessor will decrease the appraised value of all effected properties. “

“Challenges await,” he wrote.

Strickler also states that he has a background in renewables energy business, and that he’s skeptical about the OAC plans to satisfy the qualifications.

“I see little benefit placing PV panels on a roof area limited in size. There is no way they can generate ALL their own electricity and ONLY use water that falls on the site for a health club (showers, hot tubs & pool?) and hotel to boot. Did the City relax these requirements?”

Another resident is concerned about all the vehicle traffic produced from creating a new hotel with 63 rooms and only 38 parking units.

Jon Mathison owns a business across the street from the site. He also wrote to the city.

“Adding new parking spaces increases automobile traffic disproportionately, 38 spaces will attract hundreds of drivers distractedly searching for those few parking spaces.”

Mathison asked DPD to reduce or eliminate the parking space and to increase bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and bus service. He also asked DPD to consider not allowing parking 30 feet from all corners of all blocks in the area to increase bicyclists, pedestrians and driver safety. In addition he asked to bump paid-parking hours from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., stating, “that is when the Ave is just getting going.”

This is not the only project Riggle and the OAC are planning in Ballard.

Right now the OAC is in the midst of a controversial move with the Salmon Bay Aerie of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Riggle is an Eagles member, and the OAC has offered to buy the Eagle’s adjacent commercial property (5244 Leary Ave. N.W.) for $2.4 million. Riggle owns the adjacent properties to the east of the Eagle’s property. The OAC circulated a flyer to their members at their facility. It stated that they hope to build a 400 unit parking structure at the Eagle’s commercial property in order to “fix the parking problem in Ballard.”

The flyer is also an invitation to members on behalf of the OAC to become members of the Eagles before a Feb. 6 vote when the decision to sell the commercial property will be made. The OAC offered to pay their $36 membership dues.

For more information on this story visit: http://www.ballardnewstribune.com/2016/01/25/news/are-eagles-being-hija…