At the ULI Seattle Young Leaders Happy Hour lsat month, someone brought up that in the upcoming apartment boom, downtown Seattle will increase it's residential unit count from approximately 45,000 to 64,000, close to a 50% increase. I mentioned the fact that most of these additional units would be comprised of studios and one-bedrooms and noted that as Gen Y young adults begin to match up and settle down together, there will be few options for them to stay downtown as their family size expands.
This is when I met a gentleman in his mid thirties who lives right in the heart of Pioneer Square with his wife and toddler daughter. We got to talking about our mutual love of cities, and I asked him about his decision to raise his daughter downtown and what that might look like as she gets older.
Starting with the basics, he loves living in the city. Many things are simple now that his daughter is still young. They pop her in the stroller and walk along the waterfront on the weekends, and his commute time is next to nothing, so time that he might spend stuck in traffic in a car commuting is better spent with his family. However, he noted that his wife often drives outside of downtown to attend play dates with other kids. There simply aren't enough toddlers downtown to set up regular play dates. He also noted that they live in a school district boundary that concerns him and his wife when their daughter reaches high school. If they lived one block to the north, their daughter would go to a better school.
Without getting into the details of the Seattle School District boundaries and options for transfering schools, this highlights two things: (1) the effect that the public school system has on residential real estate and (2) the timing of young families' moves out of downtown (or more appropriately, to better school districts). I've heard of many examples of families with children living downtown until their first-born turns 4 or 5. As soon as four birthday candles are blown out the parents start the hunt for a different abode. For some families, sending their children to private school is a way around this dilemna, but for the majority, this doesn't pencil out. For many, the only option is to move to a better school district or within a different school boundary for the sake of their child's education. If they don't, they risk sending their child to a school that may not adequately meet their needs.
In short, most people decide that their child's education is more important than the length of their commute or the ability to walk to the art musuem. And for many, this decision is also made much easier by the fact that they can buy more house for their money outside the city than they can afford downtown.
More to come!
