These pictures are from my on Sunday afternoon walk-about to check out the construction projects in downtown and South Lake Union.
This is 1120 Denny Way: two 41-storey towers containing 1,179 apartments, and 28,000 sq.ft of retail space. It’s still just a hole in the ground, so I pasted a rendering of the buildings onto a Google Maps picture. This is the largest residential construction project in the history of the city, built on two properties that the developer had bought from the Seattle Times newspaper for $62.5 million in 2013. I could not find the estimated construction cost for all of this, but it could easily top $100 million. The little inset in the white frame shows the side facade of the former printing press building of the Seattle Times. The existing green space (park) across from it will be reconstituted after the construction.On the left is a new Hilton Garden Inn hotel, and on the right the newly completed AMLI Arc, a 393-unit, 41 storey apartment tower at 1800 Boren Avenue. (The street surfaces take a beating with these construction projects .. one hopes that that will get fixed up sooner rather than later!).My obligatory check-in at the Amazon biospheres. The clean-up around the spheres is almost complete (top). The little visitor center is open (but no public access to the big spheres), with giant display screens showcasing flowers and plants, and a handful of other table displays. That orchid is a ‘phragmipedium Fritz Schomburg’. The first part of the name is the genus, and it is a hybrid orchid created by a Mr Schomberg.Grays against a gray sky (looking north on Westlake Avenue). It’s been cold, but we have actually had some blue-sky days! From left to right: 2200 Westlake Condos (the two curved columns), then Cirrus apartments and then the Amazon Port 99 building.
