Multi Mixed-Use at the Broadway on Broadway

By Doug Schwartz, Capitol Hill Times, April 2008

If the phrase "mixed-use" usually brings to mind retail and residential uses, then the upcoming Broadway on Broadway project is mixed-use times two. It’s true that the upcoming project at 1616 Broadway, directly across from Seattle Central Community College, creates retail and apartment space. To that usual mix, the project is adding commercial space as well as creating student housing for the college.
Many will remember the property as the former location of the First Christian Church. The church was heavily damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, an event that led to the church’s merging with Pilgrim Congregational Church when First Christian didn’t have the money to repair the building. The building was torn down several years ago and has subsequently been used as a parking lot. The upcoming project also uses two other parcels that are currently used as parking lots.
The 1926 terra cotta building on the corner of Broadway and East Pine Street, a former Chrysler dealership, is not part of the Broadway on Broadway development.
Developer Mike Malone is confident The Broadway, which occupies a prominent location and will serve to connect the south end of Broadway with the Pike-Pine corridor, will be one the neighborhood appreciates. The Broadway on Broadway is slated to break ground toward the end of April. Construction will last approximately 18 months.
Malone is clearly excited by the project.
"I’d had this property for a while and had to decide what to do with it," he said. "Our challenge is to build a big building that doesn’t really look like a big building."
It’s a large project, but it’s broken up in several ways to help minimize the impacts of size. Ten retail spaces are placed along Broadway. Above them are several commercial spaces, most of which are less than 1,000 square feet in size, spaces that will likely appeal to small professional firms that would rather avoid downtown but desire a close-end location.
Above them is the residential component, which will be set back from the first two floors and consists of 92 apartments in various configurations.
"From the street perspective, the building more or less stops at 30 feet in height," Malone said. "We were then able to create great balcony spaces for the residential units above."
Malone said a great deal of thought went into the landscaping, which will also serve to delineate the building’s different uses. The residential component has its main entrance on Nagle Place, which helps connect it to Cal Anderson Park.
On the building’s north side, facing college buildings, are 28 units that are specifically earmarked for SCCC student housing. The student housing, which will be used for foreign students, will have its own entrance on the building’s north side.
While zoning required that 50 parking spaces be provided, the Broadway on Broadway project contains 166 in a two-floor underground garage accessed off Nagle Place. The extra parking, which is produced at great expense, was chosen in part because the building will replace three parking lots, Malone said.
Malone added that design elements, such as using a similar sandstone on the Broadway side as is used on the Broadway Performance Hall across the street, were chosen to help the project connect with its location.
"Our challenge has been to create identity for the project," Malone said. "We looked at the neighborhood’s needs and tried to address many of them."
Malone said that it’s too early to say what sort of retail tenants will occupy the finished building. But he vowed to create a balance and help provide businesses the neighborhood needs.
"We’re not going to rent to national chains," he said. "We won’t go there. The goal is to create spaces that are an asset to the neighborhood."
Another coming change will alter the feel of the block. Malone has donated the Jimi Hendrix sculpture that for years has rested on Broadway near East Pine Street, to the newly opened Northwest African American Museum, of which he is a board member. But another musical icon will take its place, albeit not someone with a particular Seattle connection.
"I have one of Elvis we’re going to put in that spot," Malone said.
Doug Schwartz is the editor of the Capitol Hill Times. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com or 461-1308.