Seattle debates new redevelopment plan for Laurelhurst’s Talaris site

After years of fits and starts, another plan has surfaced to reshape a mothballed site in Seattle’s Laurelhurst neighborhood. And once again, the proposal is drawing outrage.

The 17.8-acre, partially wooded Talaris site near Seattle Children’s hospital would become home to 48 single-family homes under a development plan currently awaiting city approval. 

The Battelle Memorial Institute and Talaris Research Institute once operated on the campus of modernist buildings, grassy areas and a pedestrian bridge over a pond, and nearby residents enjoyed access to the property, but the site has been fenced off since late 2019. The property is owned by an LLC called 4000 Property, which is connected to telecom magnate Bruce McCaw. 

Under the latest plan, the property owners would preserve five of the seven buildings on the site and turn three of them into duplexes and the others into office space. High-end single-family homes would be built mostly around the edges of the property.

“It’s an opportunity to really get this site back to its former glory,” said Nathan Rimmer, vice president of real estate at Pistol Creek Company, the management group overseeing the site. 

Others see a huge mistake in the making.

“Seattle is in the middle of this affordable housing crisis and climate crisis,” said Sarah Davis, who owns a home near the property. “It just doesn’t seem like this plan is really responsible in addressing either of those issues.”

Hundreds of people echoed those concerns in a recent round of public comment. Many are opposed to the expected loss of more than 200 trees, about 52% of the trees on the site. Others oppose building luxury single-family homes on the site, arguing the city is in desperate need of denser and more affordable housing as costs stretch out of reach for many. 

Davis said she is concerned about the loss of trees and the plan for single-family homes. “I do think that there is a sea change happening in the idea of single-family neighborhoods having to stay that way. I just don’t think that’s as important as housing people,” Davis said. 

Current zoning allows only single-family homes and backyard cottages at the site, and single-family houses in the area are expensive. The median home in Laurelhurst sold for $1.9 million in September, up 10% from a year ago, according to Redfin. 

“We don’t have a housing crisis for super wealthy people who can afford a $3 million home,” said Laura Loe, founder of Share the Cities, a nonprofit whose volunteers organized against the proposal under the banner “Affordable Talaris.” 

For a property within a mile of jobs at Seattle Children’s Hospital and University Village, building a relatively small number of pricey single-family homes is the “opposite of low-carbon living … in the heart of our city,” Loe said.

Affordable Talaris advocates urged the site owner to delay building plans until after the city’s next round of comprehensive planning, set to be finalized in 2024, in hopes Laurelhurst could be upzoned. Meanwhile, advocates who worry about the loss of trees are calling on the city to require more study of the proposal’s environmental effects.

Even so, big changes to the latest plan appear unlikely. 

The property owners tried a decade ago to get the city to upzone the site. “It never made it out of committee,” Rimmer said, referring to the first step of getting City Council approval. “The neighborhood was 100% against it.”

Since then, the city has not attempted to change the zoning, Rimmer said, and the owners have little interest in trying again. “The ownership team said: ‘We’re not going to spend more money to go down that path again,’” Rimmer said.

The Talaris site has been the subject of public fights over its future for years. 

In a 1991 settlement agreement with the Laurelhurst Community Club, the Battelle Memorial Institute agreed that it would not seek a rezone for the property, though a future buyer could seek a change. (Battelle sold the property in 1997, and the current owners bought it in 2000 for $15.6 million.) In 2012, the owners floated two development options, one that would remake the entire site to build 80 single-family homes and another that would preserve some of the site’s buildings and landscape while adding up to 350 apartments in two- to four-story buildings. 

The property has since been landmarked, adding another wrinkle to the redevelopment process. The landmark designation does not block development but requires property owners to get approval before remodeling or demolishing, as long as that process does not deprive an owner of “reasonable economic use” of the site.

The owners listed the property for sale in 2017 and found a buyer that planned to build 63 single-family homes on the site, but that deal later fell through.

In recent years, even as the city has sought to increase density, Seattle City Council members have shown little appetite for trying to stop the Talaris development.

“Ideally, the owner would incorporate input from the neighborhood as well as save the trees, save the landmarked buildings, and even consider higher-density mixed-income housing,” said Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who represents Laurelhurst, in a statement.

But given that the site is privately owned, “it’s questionable whether the City can legally restrict their plans at this point if they follow the rules,” Pedersen said.

The newest plan is scaled back from earlier proposals in response to feedback from the landmarks board and “neighborhood considerations,” Rimmer said.

Even the scaled-back plan continues to draw opposition.

Tree advocate Sandy Shettler said she would rather see the site redeveloped by replacing existing buildings, rather than removing trees, though it’s not clear a design like that could survive the landmarks process.

“We have the technology and we’ve got the skills to build housing and [preserve] trees and we’re not using them,” said Shettler, a board member for several organizations focused on preserving Seattle trees. “We’re allowing the lowest common denominator to be the standard.”

The Laurelhurst Community Club is worried about the loss of trees but so far “neutral” on the specifics of the latest development plan because it could still change, said President Colleen McAleer. Still, the group believes the “ideal” outcome would be to continue using the site for small institutions, she said.

Rimmer said his company’s proposal prioritizes the “best trees” on the site. However, he said, some removal of trees is necessary to redevelop.

The proposal continues to make its way through the city permitting process. The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections is accepting more public comment through Nov. 14, said spokesperson Bryan Stevens.

If the proposal comes to fruition, the owners of the site hope to start work next summer and finish the homes in about two and a half years, Rimmer said.

The final result is expected to be a development with private roads, open spaces and tree canopy all maintained by a homeowners association funded by significant homeowner fees. While the project is not currently planned as a gated community, those types of decisions would ultimately be up to the HOA, Rimmer said.

Just how much will the 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot homes, some with accessory dwelling units, cost? Rimmer declined to speculate years before they hit the market, but acknowledged they will be on the market’s high end. 

“They will fit the neighborhood and the market,” Rimmer said. “We need people who have the means to support the site.”

This story includes information from Seattle Times archives.