The Design Commission is presenting their
State Of The City Design Report 2015 [PDF] to the City Council on Wednesday. (In a Machiavellian work of scheduling, this comes right before the Preserve the Pearl appeal of the Design Commission's approval of Block 136). A few themes I picked up from the slides:
- There are three examples of buildings that dramatically improved during the Design Commission review: 419 E Burnside; the Stadium Fred Meyer; and the Pearl Marriott. Seeing the difference really makes wish the Design Commission had reviewed the Linden apartments or the Hawthorne Safeway, neither of which are in design districts.
- There's a huge number of projects going on in the Central Eastside / Lloyd District. This is probably the biggest difference between the boom of the 2000s and the boom of the 2010s.
- The Design Commission really wants the Zoning Code change to prohibit housing at the ground floor in commercial corridors. They have some great examples of how it just kills the vitality of the street.
I would also like to congratulate the Design Commission for refraining from the use of Comic Sans, which unfortunately made it into the appendix of the
2014 report.
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