What is the Deal with Art Stable’s View?

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that when Urban Living blogs about Art Stable, the subject of impending loss of view surfaces. Each time, I’ve poked around the DPD site trying to locate the land use notice to learn more about what’s coming but have always come up empty — I blame the search tool, not myself :). As I biked from the Hill to Fremont today, I stopped in South Lake Union to get my hands on the permit# and figure out the story.

Before I dig in, I want to clarify that when Matt and I toured Art Stable a few months ago and asked about the view, Chris from Pointe32 was very forthcoming in saying that the Art Stable project was never intended to be a “view building” per se. So as I’m hyper-analyzing the future of the view, just keep in mind that there are plenty of other elements about this project that contribute to the luxury price tag (and Matt does a good job of listing them in his post).

So about the view. Down by Art Stable I found there are actually land use notices for two different projects in the vicinity.

#3012256 – A 7-story apartment project by AMLI that is slated to go in where there is currently a paid parking lot at 1260 Republican St. The most recent Early Design Guidance meeting was on June 15, 2011. The proposal is available online (PDF), but meeting results are not yet posted.

Within the proposal is the following image to show you where AMLI’s project will go in (Art Stable should be in the background but this picture was taken before it was even built apparently):

And here’s a shot I snapped from across the parking lot today (Art Stable is the center building of the three in the background, red rooftop):

From these two images, I’m deducing that only the views to the southwest (towards downtown) will be interrupted for Art Stable by the AMLI development. The northwest views of Lake Union will largely remain intact (at least *in theory* for the length of the 15-year lease that Bright Horizons currently has on the single story building in front of Art Stable).

The other land use notice is south of the proposed AMLI project on the other side of Republican:

#3011606 – This looks to be a 7-story residential development as well, located at 420 Pontius Ave N. It’s most recent design review was April 20, 2011 and the proposal is available online (PDF).  Since it is farther south, it probably won’t impact Art Stable’s views more than the AMLI project.

So there you have it on two projects with potential to impact Art Stable’s view. I’m not sure what the timeline (or funding status) is for either of these developments but the fact that each has been in design review in recent months might indicate that we’ll see these built in the next couple years?

Update 8/18: Seattle Times had an article on these two projects in May. At that time, the developer was hopeful the AMLI project would start early next year, and the further south project (by Vulcan) is intended to break ground early next year as well.