Townhouse solutions could uglify instead of beautify

Seattle developers, city planners and neighborhood activists agree many recently built townhouses are ugly.

But some say the solutions planners have come up with are just a start, while others insist they'll make a bad situation worse.

Townhouses sit on individual lots, like traditional Seattle houses, but the lots are smaller, and the houses share at least one wall and usually a driveway with neighboring homes.

City officials see townhouses as a way to generate more affordable homes. And builders like that they don't have many of the insurance and liability problems associated with condominium projects.

"There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the townhome," City Councilwoman Sally Clark said Saturday at a forum. "But I think we all agree that, as a community, we're seeing some things that we think we could do better."

Planners expect to send proposed rules for multifamily developments, including townhouses, to the council within about a month. Councilman Tim Burgess roused cheers Saturday by suggesting a repeal of the code that allows the creation of townhouse lots until the council changes the rules.

But that idea did not seem to get much traction.

The current crop of townhouses is largely formulaic, with driveways through the middle of sites, leading to garages on the first floors of homes lined up on either side. Small yards are accessed from tiny guest rooms or offices opposite the front doors, with main living areas on the second floors and bedrooms on the third.

"To me this is not a civil way to live," said Greg Hill, a longtime community activist and member of the Wallingford Community Council. "I don't think you can expect people to be happy living in this kind of environment."

City planner Mike Podowski noted that multifamily zoning, which allows townhouses, apartments and condominiums, covers just 7 percent of city land, although many people who live in single-family houses in some of these areas do not realize that the zoning has been in place for years.

The layouts of townhouse projects, and even the sloping neo-Craftsman rooflines, result largely from city setback, yard and height rules, Podowski said.

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