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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]GDS's development on the three parcels together, including the land transfer, is less dense than the total that could be built by right on all three parcels. Period.

It's a bit taller, but not any taller on the avenue.

Recall that one thing Safeway wanted for its deal was extra height to move the building mass away from the neighbors. I thought that was an OK outcome too, but the design was huuurrrble.[/quote]

This is all a bit, er, academic.  GDS wants to redevelop the Safeway site for its lower and middle school.  With that, the site will be so crowded that play space for the younger kids has to be built at the periphery of the property and the playing field put three stories up in the air.  GDS is not going to add mixed-use to its immediate campus.

It's also beside the point, because GDS is not only adding hundreds of students and staff to the campus, but it's building dense mixed use right across 42nd St.  So it's not just a reshuffling of what Safeway originally proposed, but with the added double whammy of a much larger school.  At first, when GDS first announced its campus consolidation, many neighbors were neutral to supportive.  GDS at least was a known commodity in the neighborhood, and the purchase of the Safeway precluded the PUD that Safeway had proposed for the site.  Some thought that the school plan would mean more actual green space.  As a result, neighbors were willing to accept the tradeoff of additional additional traffic and other impacts caused by adding the hundreds of additional students and staff to the site.  Others lamented the loss of Safeway, a middle market grocery store in the neighborhood.  Then GDS announced its plans for 42nd.  So now the neighborhood has essentially the worst of all alternatives:  a much larger school that will occupy its site nearly completely, with all of the associated traffic and other impacts; the loss of Safeway; AND tall, dense mixed-use development.[/quote]

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