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As a resident of Wallingford for my entire life (just over 17 years), I’ve always enjoyed walking down Stone Way and along 45th Street. Each street contributes to my home’s Walk Score of 95, making it a “Walkers’ Paradise,” where most errands can be done on foot. Lately, I’ve wondered why more housing has been built on Stone Way than on 45th Street.  

This question led me to look more deeply into the knobs and levers that control a neighborhood’s development. 

I recently took a walk along both streets with the purpose of identifying patterns. I counted many recently built large apartment buildings on Stone Way, and when I analyzed the City of Seattle permit data, I learned that there have been almost 1,500 new apartment units built on Stone Way since 2007. On 45th Street, however, only a little more than 300 new units have been built during this timeframe.  

I spoke with Daniel Swanson, the owner of Swanson’s Shoe Repair on N 45th Street, to get his perspective on how the street has changed. He is a fourth-generation business owner, and he explained that recent rent increases have caused some local businesses to close. He said that if there were more people living on 45th Street, there would be more customers to help cover the rising rent. 

So why aren’t there more people living on 45th Street? 

At first, I wondered if the differences between 45th Street and Stone Way were related to zoning regulations. However, both streets are zoned similarly, with a height limit of 55 feet. This led me to look into the history of both streets. 

Stone Way and 45th have very different origins. Stone Way started as a strip of industrial buildings and auto shops, while 45th Street has historically consisted of restaurants and mom-and-pop shops. When I was born, Stone Way was an industry-heavy strip that lacked the retail and restaurants of today. 

Today, 45th Street still has more restaurants and small businesses than Stone Way. I especially enjoy the cluster of Japanese, Thai, Taiwanese, and Chinese restaurants near Lincoln High School. It turns out that these small businesses that I love impact 45th Street’s development in ways I didn’t expect. 

One of the most enlightening things I learned was the role that lot size plays in real estate development. It turns out that the smaller lots on 45th Street that house our beloved local businesses are more challenging for real estate developers. I spoke with Joe Hurley, a land use planner who lives in Wallingford. He explained that small lots are harder to develop because it’s not cost-effective to build underground parking. 

As Donald Shoup, an economist focused on urban planning, writes in The Price of Unwanted Parking, “If lot sizes are small and irregular, parking can be extraordinarily expensive, if not impossible, to provide on-site.”  

 A 2022 article by The Urbanist gives an example of how the large lots on Stone Way were developed: “The Stone Way Electric warehouse has been demolished, an underground 76-stall parking garage will soon be excavated, and an eight-story building will then rise, bringing 243 homes and retail space to the bustling mixed-use district.” These kinds of developments are less common on 45th Street due to the smaller lot sizes. 

I was surprised to learn from the Seattle Municipal Code that since 2012, neither Stone Way nor 45th Street has had minimum parking requirements for residential buildings. In other words, developers are not required to build parking for each unit. People still require parking, however, and so developers often choose to build parking even when it’s not required. 

Many factors impact the development of a neighborhood, but now, when I walk on Stone Way and 45th, it’s hard not to see how lot sizes and the difficulty of building parking on small lots have influenced the development of these two streets. 

I dug into the permit data and was excited to see that 256 housing units on 45th Street are either permitted or in progress. It seems that a 2019 zoning change that allowed an extra story on 45th Street (see MHA Wallingford map), relaxed parking requirements, and rising rents have made more lots on 45th Street attractive to developers. I hope this new housing brings Daniel Swanson at Swanson’s Shoe Repair and other small business owners more customers in the future.

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Notes and Methodology

Special thanks to Seleta Reynolds, Joe Hurley, and Daniel Swanson for their contributions to this article. 

The number of units completed in the housing graph comes from the City of Seattle’s public building-permit records. The chart shows only buildings that are actually finished, placed in the year people could move in. A few permits were fixed by hand against what’s really on the ground: buildings that are built and leasing are counted even if their permit still says “expired,” projects that were never built are dropped, and corner buildings are credited to the street they face. I downloaded and analyzed the City of Seattle permit data using Claude Cowork.