by Sara 

Big happenings at Briarcliff this Saturday

13 Comments

All are?invited to?CamWest, a Toll Brothers Company’s?model grand opening at Briarcliff on Saturday, March 8th from noon-5pm.? In addition to a latte cart serving Caffe Appassionato coffee, there will be drawings for gift certificates to local restaurants, plus the opportunity to win a Seattle skyline painting from a local artist.? Look for other fun giveaways, and a photo flip book booth during the event.

From Toll Brothers? website:

Perched high atop the western hills of Seattle is Magnolia, one of the most desired neighborhoods in the Seattle area with spectacular views, abundant natural beauty, and a historic pedigree dating back to the late 1800s. Briarcliff at Magnolia is the only new home community in this distinctive neighborhood. A peninsula bounded by Salmon Bay, Shilshole Bay, Puget Sound, and Elliott Bay, Magnolia feels like an island retreat, but is mere minutes from the vibrant core of downtown Seattle. At Briarcliff, metropolitan amenities combine with the luxury and architecture of these exquisite new homes to create a unique home-buying opportunity.

The living is good?in Magnolia!

4005 Briarcliff Lane W

 

About the author 

Sara

  1. All the thousands of dollars the residents on 39th Avenue West spent on lawyers fighting the development of this former school site…and all wasted. The neighborhood is built up, is selling, traffic is going down their holy streets, and they are adjusting to the world still turning. Bravo to the market…good houses are selling to good buyers, and 39th Avenue west is developed like any other new development in Seattle. Treeless, I imagine. Just another neighborhood with through traffic. Jamie Moyer doesn’t live there anymore.

      1. Families where both people work like heck to make the mortgage payments don’t want a yard that takes time to take care of. I used to be in real estate, and yards are only for people who have the time to take care of them. I am an avid gardener so they mean something to me…but the buyers of those homes do NOT want yards, they want a good neighborhood and a glitzy house to entertain.

          1. For a builder to want to build out a lot he has to make a profit. He is risking money he has borrowed. So the builder builds the maximum number of units the law allows, since there is no guarantee they will all sell in the time he has to pay back his loan. Trees? Parks? They are required by the city so the builder puts them in….trust me, he doesn’t live in one of those houses…he is running a business and could care less about things like that. The city could have insisted on a big park or whatever you think would be a better option….but it didn’t, and a builder came in and built it out. That is how the business is done, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with being greedy or not. People take financial risks specifically because they think they will make money. Builders do the minimum they have to in order to pass inspection with the city and the inspectors. Period. Your fight is with your city, not the builder. He lives in a spacious lot, probably out in Woodinville somewhere.

  2. I’m a former resident of 40th Ave West who joined in the initial challenge to the development. Traffic & safety were part of the concern but the bigger issue was that the developer used a variance in the code for Cluster Housing to shoehorn a bunch of houses into smaller than normal lots and forgo many of the amenities, like sidewalks, that make a community more livable. The intent of the Cluster Housing concept was to encourage the development of affordable housing. I plan to attend the open house today, but from what I’ve seen there has been no attempt by the builder to honor that intent by including in the mix, housing that would be affordable to a first time buyer, a young family, or senior on a fixed income. And for the requirement that they preserve some natural space in the development, the developer called the area under the water tower across the street a “park.”

    1. No argument there. But you who fought the development fought it on the basis of not wanting lower income people coming in. So you don’t have lower income people coming in and the lack of sidewalks doesn’t affect the people on the rest of 39th Ave. W., thus the people who buy there are buying what they want. So I guess you “won” in that the arguments that affordable housing would affect the prices of your houses in a negative way did not come to pass, though there is more traffic coming through. So there still are houses are tiny lots, but million dollar houses on tiny lots without any view. I refused to fund the protest at the time because I thought the arguments against the development were wrong. So everyone got what they wanted and I feel satisfied that I didn’t spend money on lawyers fighting it.

      1. I can’t speak for the residents on 39th Ave W. but I can say that the issue of not wanting lower income people in the neighborhood was NEVER a part of any discussion I participated in. I would have welcomed an honest attempt to provide affordable housing, but we never believed they intended to do that. My concern was that developer was misusing the cluster housing concept to, as you say, shoehorn a bunch of million dollar houses onto tiny lots with no view in order to maximize their profits. Otherwise I felt they should be subject to the same zoning requirements as any other builder in the neighborhood. So please don’t presume to speak for me – diversity is what keeps a community vital & alive.

        1. I understand that there are different points of view and accept yours. I lived on 39th and the petitions and the protests were that the local schools and services could not provide services to the low income people they feared would move into what was then to be low income housing. There were fear tactics employed and murmurs of crime increases in the neighborhood. IT was a terrible street to live on, actually. Each neighborhood had different petitions, evidently. From the city’s point of view, Magnolia had a history of fighting anything on that site…a residence for the elderly for example was once proposed, so in the end the city basically just gave permission for the development because Magnolia would fight any idea anyway. That is truly just my take on it. I found the fliers disturbing at the time. I’m glad on your street the discussion reaching a higher level. I still live in Magnolia, but in an area where people don’t pay $5,000 a shot for a lawyer to fight each level of litigation, which was what was going on then…Sounds like your street would have been a good one as well!

          1. Former Resident – you have this project confused with the Fort Lawton property; the Briarcliff fiasco was about a greedy developer from the Eastside who spent way too much for the property on a gamble that they could persuade the City to not challenge a loophole in the CHP request. The vast majority of people opposing it did so because it materially changed the lot sizes, “changing Magnolia” solely to enrich the developer. It’s a shame CamWest built it out…

          2. Nope, no confusion. I lived there. The city had had it with the Magnolia neighborhood opposing everything, and maybe the developer was buddies with someone on the planning board, who knows…so you got what you deserved. Everyone on that horrid street fought the development because they thought people “lower than them” would move in. I was there when the petitions were circulated and there when they pleaded for all of us to fund the lawyers to fight it. A pox on them all. I believe the resident on 40th that some people had higher goals, but people on 39th Avenue West were afraid they would have more traffic, people of color, and reduced property values. I am not postulating…as I said, I lived there.

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