Built for Public Transit

Buildings near train stations are perfect for pedestrians but there is a lot of opposition.

Clair Enlow | February 2011 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

The Creekside Apartments at Northgate overlook a reclaimed stretch of Thornton Creek that had been buried under pavement for more than 50 years.

Walk to the light rail station and be whisked to work or the airport with no concern about parking or traffic jams. Stroll to neighborhood shops, pausing in a leafy courtyard, or drop by the local pub. It’s easy to shape up and slim down, just by moving around the neighborhood under your own power.

That’s the life envisioned in transit-oriented development projects, or TOD. What’s missing in this picture is the family car and the vehicle trips that account for much of the average person’s carbon footprint. Transit-oriented development’s focus on reducing that carbon footprint is not only an attractive lifestyle but also a responsible one.

Now, an unlikely partnership between environmental advocacy groups like the Cascade Land Conservancy and Futurewise and traditional development organizations like Master Builders Association and NAIOP (an association for commercial real estate developers) is working to make transit-oriented development a reality, coming together in the Quality Growth Alliance. However, that reality is slow in coming, and these developments have drawn some opposition from the very people they were intended to benefit the most: the public.

Slow Train Coming
A handful of ambitious and amenity-rich, transit-oriented development projects—from south Seattle to Capitol Hill, Northgate, Bellevue and Redmond—are on the drawing board, but few are coming out of the ground. One, The Station at Othello Park, developed by Othello Partners near the Othello light rail stop in south Seattle, will be leasing this spring at market rates. Other potential developers will be watching closely.

The Station at Othello Park development will include café-style seating and 20,000 square feet of retail space adjacent to light rail.

Those developers should be encouraged by news from Northgate. At Thornton Place, which has hundreds of market-rate condominium and apartment units in a mixed-use development surrounding open space and near a future light rail station, recently expiring one-year leases have been renewed at a very high rate, according to Tom Fitzsimmons, principal and chief operating officer of Lorig Associates, the master developer of Thornton Place. After a slow start in 2009, occupancy is now at 95 percent.

“We are very pleased with the performance of the apartments,” he says. “We think we have created something very special there, and we think it says something about

More information:

What’s in the TOD grant and Sustainable Communities Catalyst Projects