Last month, with Ankrom Moisan Architects, MGP filed a major new plan that could reach 1,165 units, along with retail/commercial space. It's currently going by the rubric of Overlake East, and will eventually replace three buildings developed in the 1980s.
I think it will take a few years for a merger to feed through into consolidation of operations, and I already assumed it was only a matter of time before the Safeway facilities around the Spring District are sold off - so it might not matter, but it certainly won't hurt the case.It'd be an easy one to divest if they can make bread(?) somewhere else. That's not the easiest place to get semis in and out of anymore.
That building is massive and will totally change the feel of that part of town. Current neighborhood population is approximately zero, and - pow! - suddenly there'll be 402 units. It's exciting.Update on Holland's Northup Vicino:
There's the other Holland apartment project coming right next to the current project. There's also the Big One project (I'm pretty sure that's what it's called) on Bel Red, so there is a lot coming to that area.That building is massive and will totally change the feel of that part of town. Current neighborhood population is approximately zero, and - pow! - suddenly there'll be 402 units. It's exciting.
I have a friend who's a city planning major at UW, and he's tuned into all the city's plans. He says that after the Spring District is finished, Factoria/Eastgate are next (for developable housing units), but there isn't much demand there for housing. So I guess that junky Factoria mall will definitely get torn down, just not anytime soon.There is still some developable land in the Bel-Red Corridor, and Wilburton. After that, where will additional units go, at scale (i.e., not one-off infills)? Eastgate?
The appeal of Factoria/Eastgate is limited to people who want to live on I-90. It's hard to drive to from downtown Bellevue (yes, I know about Richards Road.) You can't walk anywhere from Factoria or Eastgate, not even between Factoria and Eastgate. It won't get a train until after Barron Trump is impeached (and acquitted by Mitch McConnell's great grandchild.) The only way to get anywhere around Factoria and Eastgate is by car and the roads are already choked.Factoria/Eastgate are next (for developable housing units), but there isn't much demand there for housing.
Parking ratios are over the place and don’t seem to correlate with proximity to the train station:Well, does anyone know what the parking ratios are like at the new housing developments in Bel Red? That market may be building 1:1 (if allowed), so the idea of a connected or continuous urban experience from downtown to Factoria may not prove out in the market anyway.
FWIW outside of the dense urban core (and even in there depending on the resident) we have found it difficult to get the rents necessary to justify new construction if residents aren't able to park in the building. I'm not talking about underwriting models, just actuals. As someone who is always looking at ways to "value engineer" a building to make it work financially so we can get equity and banks interested enough to move forward, I would love to be able to shave down the parking ratios, but we really struggle to rent units at the rents we need them to be at in our buildings that are under parked. Even in our TOD buildings where people use transit a lot, they seem to want to be able to own a car and park it in the building, even if they don't use it every day. And that is with the parking being unbundled from the unit (you pay for the stall(s) separately).Thanks! Yeah, so at those ratios (excluding Vulcan), the Eastside is saying that urban nodes can go anywhere, as the primary mode in the future is SOV.
