Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles the ongoing South Lake Union action. It’s a decent overview for those who landed in Seattle after the squabbling over Paul Allen’s latest adventures in real estate was well underway:

Allen says he bought some of the property in the mid-1990s as part of a city initiative to create a park modeled on New York’s Central Park. Seattle voters, not keen on spending public money, twice turned down the plan in the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, “we ended up with a core of pretty interesting properties in the area,” Mr. Allen says. “There’s already a core of biotech in the area. What we wanted to do was try to build on that with these other uses to revitalize this whole area of the city. Now we’re seeing some of the fruits of that.” [wsj (via Joe's del.icio.us feed #)]

We’re not surprised by the WSJ’s pro-business spin on the development (calling the district “decaying” was our first tip-off), but we like the article because it shows what happens when tax payers decline their own version of Central Park. Instead of a place where single-named artists mount pricey fabric installations, we get a biotech hub.

In any case, it’s hard to complain about any effort that brings a Whole Foods to grocery-deprived downtown.

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3. Urban Density: Downtown
4. Discontent and Animal Control
5. The 2007 City Council Candidates: What Would You Ask Them?