Mundee, Jennifer Frances.

Seattle is encouraging development which mixes residential and commercial uses as a way to concentrate future growth in compact urban villages. But recently completed mixed use projects in the city are not doing well financially and many commercial spaces remain vacant creating a hostile street environment. This study looks at the design of existing structures and their relationship to the street for clues to improve the success of mixed use in the future.

To find relationships among the characteristics of street and building design and the current success or failure of projects, fifty mixed use projects in Seattle built between 1988 and 1993 were examined in detail. Information about the fifty case studies was collected via telephone surveys, site visits, interviews and maps. Data describing both quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the city, street, and building environment was collected. Elements of street and project design were derived from a literature review and used to analyze the projects, allowing comparison of very individual projects, sites and conditions.

Analysis of the data found that projects in convenience business districts and NC2 zones had the highest occupancy; projects on smaller collector streets do better than those on larger streets; corner locations improve occupancy; smaller projects on smaller lots do better; projects with little setback from the sidewalk are often occupied. Many of the parameters which developers and planners expect or assume to affect occupancy were not shown to be influential. For instance: traffic volume and speed made little difference; narrow road crossing widths were not shown to be beneficial; street trees and awnings were not an important factor; blocks more than 600 feet long had higher occupancy than shorter blocks.

For lenders to continue to invest in mixed use buildings, future projects must be financially viable. Therefore, it is necessary that projects be built in areas with the requisite density, surrounding commercial activity, and adequate access. More mixed use is not necessarily better. Well-designed projects in the wrong places will, unfortunately, be detrimental to the future of mixed use in Seattle.