By Kate Snyder
A proposal for a mixed-use project that would bring more than 100 apartments to Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood was moved forward by the Northeast Design Review Board during a recommendation meeting on Monday.
Kamiak Real Estate Developer is the project developer, Weinstein A+U LLC is the designer and the landscape architect is Karen Kiest Landscape Architects. In 2021, Kamiak purchased the site and neighboring addresses for $8 million, according to The Registry’s previous reporting. The firm at the time had intentions to construct a 121-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail and underground parking. Current plans show a smaller proposal with fewer units.
The proposed project is an apartment building located at 4318 Stone Way N. The development would consist of 105 market-rate apartment units, a resident lobby, mail and parcel rooms, leasing and management offices, interior residential amenity spaces, a private exterior landscaped courtyard and a roof terrace, according to project plans. There are three street-level retail and restaurant spaces totaling 4,788 square feet that are included in the design along Stone Way N, a terraced street-level publicly accessible, privately managed exterior plaza and 84 structured vehicle stalls located in an underground parking garage. The building would stand six stories above grade, and the below-grade parking garage would total approximately 120,000 square feet.
The building’s exterior design, discussed at a previous early design guidance meeting, is divided into smaller massings with respective facade articulations that are meant to respond to quieter, smaller-scale residential contexts. While the patterning of the west elevation embraces the more public and commercial context of Stone Way N., a continuous roof and soffit line look to reinforce the massings. At the base, the structure is inset in order to differentiate street level commercial uses from the residential uses above. That discontinuity allows for differences in materials and scale. A weather protected circulation path along the street level frontage connects a series of stepped terraces that respond to the site’s topography and look to activate the street level.
Daniel Goddard, principle at Weinstein A+U, gave a presentation to the board on the details of the project, particularly on the massing and facade design.
“The east elevation was devised to promote privacy,” Goddard said. “The intent was to limit the number of windows and orient the units behind them either to the courtyard or to the adjacent streets.”
The project site consists of the westernmost 110 feet of the block bounded by N 43rd Street to the south, Stone Way N to the west and N 44th Street to the north. The total area of the site is approximately half an acre and was most recently occupied by Stone Way Hardware as well as a building formerly home to Fathom Seattle. The surrounding neighborhood is varied with a senior living community, other mixed-use buildings, parking lots, local businesses and single-family homes.
Overall, the board supported the design. Comments from board members involved the awning at the residential entry needing more emphasis to stand out as an entrance marker and the possibility of adding more trees to the streetscape on Stone Way between the building and the sidewalk without losing visibility from the terraces and retail space. The board also commended the design team for the signage, which members believe was simple and elegant.
Kamiak acquires, develops and operates niche multifamily and commercial assets in the greater Seattle region, according to the firm’s website. Earlier this month, the company had another project approved in a design review meeting. That project is a 119-unit project called Songbird that is located at 1121 E Fir St. in the city’s Yesler Terrace neighborhood. The project would offer a mix of studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments, plus 3,000 square feet of retail and 50 vehicle parking stalls. The eight-story building would total approximately 107,300 square feet and have frontages along Fir and 12th streets.
