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Ballard Master Plan Guides New Construction
By Adam Richter
Architect's drawing of Salmon Bay Place, the building that will replace the old Ballard Eagles hall. |
When their replacement, a five-story, 100,000-square-foot commercial building, goes up, it could well set the standard for how new construction will look in downtown Ballard. Scott Clark, an architect with Clark Design Group, says he incorporated 12-foot-wide sidewalks, a brick facade and trees on all three street sides of the new building.
Many of the design elements, while voluntary, conform to recommended guidelines in what's called the Ballard Master Plan. The plan sets out to create a pedestrian-friendly "civic center" in central Ballard by including plans for a new library, new park and new design guidelines for commercial buildings.
"We were willing to sort of use our building as the guinea pig," says Clark--the hope being that as Salmon Bay Place goes, so goes the future of commercial development in Ballard.
Neighborhood planning, like other intensely democratic processes, has great potential to go horribly wrong. It can lead to too many people pulling in too many directions until the end result makes everyone unhappy.
By most accounts, this didn't happen with the Ballard Master Plan. Ballard District Council President Kay Ogren says the process was flexible and allowed for needed changes.
"We consider neighborhood planning a living document," she says.
That's a weighty description for what, according to Beth Miller of the Ballard Chamber of Commerce says started as a sketch on a napkin.
Three major elements comprise the Ballard Master Plan: a new 15,000-square-foot library, a new park, and new design guidelines for future commercial developers. Two of those--the library and the park--required voter approval through the Libraries for All and PRO-Parks levies passed in 1999 and 2000.
But the last one needs cooperation from private developers--the design guidelines are voluntary--which is why Clark's decision to include them in his design of Salmon Bay Center has many people excited about Ballard's future.
Miller, the Chamber's executive director, calls Salmon Bay Place a "wonderful thing."
"I believe that will have very much a sense of place," she says.
Stephen Lundgren, a member and former president of the Ballard District Council, says he also likes what's happening at Salmon Bay Place. But he points to another Ballard landmark as the model for commercial development: the Majestic Bay Theater, which Lundgren calls "a total success story."
"What we're hoping for are more people like Ken Alhadeff," says Lundgren. Alhadeff built the new Majestic Bay Theater on Market Street, which shows first-run films on its three screens and consistently draws customers.
Miller also points to the Bay as a good sign for commercial development in Ballard.
"The Bay has been a symbol of revitalization" in the neighborhood, she says.
All of this new and proposed development is happening against the backdrop of a very old neighborhood, however. Ballard was its own city, in fact, before Seattle annexed it in 1907. Certainly other neighborhoods in Seattle have fallen under the spell of booming construction times, only to have critics say those neighborhoods lost their identities along the way. It happened to Belltown and Fremont. Could it happen here?
Ogren doesn't think so.
"We don't want to see it become overly gentrified," she says. At the same time, no one ever came up with a fixed identity for Ballard that had to be preserved or go under the wrecking ball.
"I don't think we ever came to an agreement as to who or what we were," she says. The changes coming to Ballard are more of what Ogren calls a "natural evolution."
Lundgren says Ballard has enough economic diversity to keep it from changing its identity--whatever that may be.
"This is an area where you can mix the commercial and industrial with the residential and still get away with it," he says.
And as for the popular perception of Ballard as a Scandinavian hub--Lundgren says that's not going to vanish either.
"There still are a dedicated ton of Norse people here," he says.
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