Karsti Apartments are located in Ballard on the Southwest side of 15th St and NW 59th. The building borders the sidewalk on 15th for about 100 feet. There is a huge amount of auto and a significant amount of pedestrian traffic that moves along this street everyday as 15th is the main N-S arterial in Northwest Seattle.
While they do have a barber shop on the very corner, the rest appears to be residential but it is designed to hide from the street entirely instead of interacting with it. The windows are covered with printed graphics or blinds and the floor is raised from the sidewalk rather than at level. There is no visual exchange between the two spaces, the inside is designed to shield the occupants from the outside as much as possible.
The volume of traffic on the street is a defining trait that is not going to change anytime in the near future. Any building that goes up along said street should be required to be designed so that it interacts with it and views it’s traits as an advantage and embraces them. A building that is designed so that it is fighting against the very nature of its setting will never be a good use of space. It leads to dead zones on streets. It takes space from people and organizations that could actually benefit from the traffic that the builders are trying to shield the occupants from.
Many of the new developments on 15th north of here suffer from this same defect. There are hundreds of residential units with front doors that open directly onto 15th. The townhomes and similar units with front doors that open onto a high-traffic arterial are building types that should have been built a block or two in from 15th. 15th itself should have commercial/public use units on the ground level that would benefit from the passing traffic instead of being negatively impacted by it with higher density apartment units above that could utilize the major bus routes that run along the street. We’re scared to build real density and end up building bad structures that don’t serve any purpose well. These end up doing damage in the long run not only because of the opportunity cost (poor uses of space in important areas), but also because they create a negative perception of what sort of “urban living” proponents are actually trying to create.
Seattle Streets 