When describing a proposal to build a 45-story condo and hotel tower in the middle of Federal Way, the city’s economic development director, Pat Doherty, says it will be the exclamation point on the suburban city’s skyline.
But exclamation points come at the end. Federal Way is still writing its sentence.
Like most suburban cities that emerged from that pair of post-World War II booms – the baby boom and the automobile boom – Federal Way wants a real downtown. It not only needs to accept more population growth but also wants more density to spur the types of amenities that will attract people and investment.
That demands more density, and that means building higher.
But a tower for Federal Way and a tower for Seattle are two different things. A 15-story building that wouldn’t be noticed in downtown Seattle – and because of the high cost of land probably wouldn’t be built anymore – would be dominant in Federal Way.
It also would be better. Unlike a 45-story building, people who live and work in that 15-story tower might actually come out and walk around.
Even 15 stories might be more than Federal Way wants or needs. Those who study urban land use know that once people get up too high – somewhere around nine stories – they are much less likely to come out. Get up too high and the streetscape loses detail and becomes less enticing.
Pedestrians begin to feel unwelcome amidst towers that lack human scale. So you build higher only if the economics of land values and demand require it.
So if a suburban city is hoping to create a more interesting, walkable downtown, why would it allow a developer to build 45 stories? A single tower of that scale would suck decades worth of investment and growth into a few blocks. It wouldn’t spur investment – it would chase it away.
Even the density junkies in the environmental community can’t possibly support such a grossly out-of-scale building, a tower so tall and isolated that it likely would create its own weather.
I get why someone would propose the so-called Sky Hotel & Residences. Because they are taking advantage of yet another government scheme to spur investment in urban areas, the normal economics don’t apply.
This federal program gives special access to residency status to foreigners who invest more than a million bucks into designated areas (Tacoma, Lakewood and Everett are the others).
In the Federal Way case, developers are hoping to attract Koreans who want to invest in and/or live in America. In return for their investment, they would jump ahead of others who want a green card to live in the United States and could convert some of the investment into one of the 400 condos.
Such well-intention development schemes tend to skew development decisions in bizarre ways – like 45-story towers in nine-story cities. Another example is the eight-to-12 year property tax break for in-city condos and apartments. Because tax breaks changed the numbers for residential developments, no one wanted to build commercial. The result (helped by the recession) is an oversupply of condos.
Proposing the tower is quite different from allowing it. (Thinking such an edifice would be cool gets into an entirely different psychological complex.)
Federal Way isn’t alone in embracing the taller-is-better slogan. Just south in Tacoma the economic development staff has jumped from one development scheme to the next – each asserting that Tacoma needs high-rises to be a real city. But even in Tacoma, towers once proposed for the Tacoma Dome and now planned along the Foss Waterway topped out at 20 stories, not 45.
Better planning is displayed in the latest revision to the neighborhood business district rules that permit heights of five stories in most districts with a few allowing seven or eight stories. That allows the density that planners want on a scale that humans will accept.
Federal Way will never see this exclamation point built, at least if people there increase the use of the question mark.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
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