Urban Living Meetup Held Among Downtown Condo Boosters

Thanks everyone who attended, thanks to Jon from South Lake Union for stopping by and a big thanks to Carl for organizing. I look forward to meeting more of you in the future.

by guest contributor Carl Goodman

A hearty bunch of nine Urban Livingites met on Wednesday evening, January 31, at a bar on Capitol Hill, thereby launching “Urban Living Meetups,” an offline community of enthusiasts of Matt’s Web site.

Sort of reminiscent of the bohemian café society of the ’60s, but without the cigarettes (or the poets or the artists for that matter), it still felt avant-garde to get together with fellow aficionados of the evolution of Seattle into a more cosmopolitan and densely populated place.

Some of us are married, some gay, of various ethnicities, a range of ages and incomes. But our commonality is that we place a premium on owning over renting and we have passion for much of what’s going on to make Seattle’s downtown neighborhoods more livable and vibrant.

We think we’re in the vanguard of a more informed and empowered condo-buyer community. We discussed how to minimize some of the tricks of the trade of speculative condo developers and hard-sell agents, and identified some elements of a wish list of community amenities the creation of which we hope to influence. Beyond all that, we’re creating a community of likeminded folks committed to this great city.

Join us for future Meetups! We’ll announce plans shortly for our next get together, likely to be held the end of February. If you have suggestions for a Meetup venue or agenda item, let us know in the Comments.