capitol hill experimental property

(musing to you, as you are the only person that i know that would be interested in this)

i'm seriously thinking about approaching this guy that lives in a farmhouse in chehalis that by some series of events that is completely foreign to me owns the sweetest little property i have ever found vacant in seattle. it is that little traffic island i found on capitol hill; the only non-city owned property of it's type i have been able to find after hours of scanning GIS.

i want to buy it.

it is, by all measurable means, an undevelopable property. it is 2,090sqft, but an odd triangle that is 50' * 90' (approx) and when setbacks are applied reduces to nearly nothing. it is tax assessed at $10,000.

the neighborhood it is in was developed in the early 1900's and it has sat undeveloped, a weird little remnant from when the streets may have been a different shape, or a larger house may have sat on the neighboring properties (my thought is that at some point things were sudivided and this was left over, and perhaps the deed has passed down from the original owner to child for the last 100 years).

i am thinking, unless there is some familial nostalgia attached to the property (the last little bit of great-grandpa's homestead...) there would be little reason that he would need/want to keep it. there is no chance of developing it into a sale-able property, and even if a compromise was made with the city over regulatory variances, the process would be long, expensive, and likely result in a home that was under 600sqft.

i want to offer him $5,000 for it.

i then want to rethink the idea of urban land use. there are a million tiny outbuilding in rural america that are under living size, outside of regulation, and functional. how could this be introduced to an urban neighborhood? what if i built a tiny farmhouse outbuilding? i build a large garden that surrounds a little urban refuge? a cabin for weekend retreats to the heart of the city that is surrounded by nature? or a tiny cottage industrial plant, where i run a home office out of a small building in the middle of a neighborhood? how can i tweak the meaning of zoning regulation to allow for the indended use, despite the overbearing regulation? what function can be applied to such a small, awkward space?

musing over.