Legal Appeal from MLB Stadium Authority Restarts Stadium District Housing Saga
Just when it looked like the issue of allowing housing construction on a hotly contested swath of industrial land in north SoDo had been put to rest, a new appeal that was quietly filed late last month could reignite it.
Just weeks after the Seattle City Council officially repealed a law that would have paved the way for residential uses around SoDo's stadiums, the municipal corporation charged with overseeing T-Mobile Park has joined with the Seattle Building & Construction Trades Council to challenge a pending plan that could ban housing there, turning the tables on the debate.
While a state planning board had ruled in November that the 2025 law opening the door to housing there was illegally adopted, this filing argues that the City is heading too quickly toward the other extreme by keeping the door sealed shut.
The hotly contested area is known as the Stadium Transition Area Overlay District (STAOD), an area clustered around First Avenue S north of Holgate Street just south of Pioneer Square. Last year, stadium boosters and building advocates came together to support a bill put forward by former Councilmember Sara Nelson that would have legalized around 1,000 units of housing in what was dubbed a new "Makers District" combining light industrial uses and workforce housing.
https://www.theurbanist.org/appeal-restarts-stadium-district-housing-saga/