Condo project drawing - this is the view facing 35th Street.

Condo developer Wade Metz and his architects presented to a group of about 60 Wedgwood neighbors at a Monday night design review. The review board and neighbors had lots of questions and concerns about the project's overall scale and impact on the neighborhood. The scope of the meeting was to address the overall footprint of the building, what it will look like, what type of shadows it will cast on the surrounding homes etc. Unfortunately this was not the forum for the real neighborhood impacting issues surrounding the project - things like parking, noise, and traffic flow. It seems that meeting will come later. Despite the project's large size in proportion to the rest of the buildings on the street, the developers do appear to be within the boundaries of the current zoning. It remains to be seen if the city can require changes to the plan based on more vaguely defined things like the negative impact of more cars and people in our slow paced family neighborhood (it seems unlikely). The meeting for the most part was civil. The neighbors did get a chance to express their anxiety about the project ("please don't turn 35th into Lake City") and the architects and Metz did appear to be processing our concerns. I spoke for a few minutes with Mr. Metz about the retail space on the bottom floor. Although he made no guarantees, he did say they prefer to rent to locally owned businesses and he envisioned a family owned restaurant in the space. That sounded promising to me.

A disturbing rumor circulating the meeting was that the building across the street from the proposed condo site had recently been sold. The building in question houses the Wedgwood Laundromat and my beloved Cafe Javasti. The potential of a corridor of large condos looming over 35th had the crowd a bit unnerved. I had a quick chat with the folks at Javasti this morning and they had also heard the rumor. They confirmed with the current owner that ownership had not changed. It fact the woman who owned it declared she had no plans to sell or re-develop the lot in her lifetime. Hooray. Lattes for everyone!