On the top of Queen Anne—a neighborhood comprised of stately homes and a quaint, bustling downtown—is an urban village that is the new home to a 140,000 square foot mixed-used development designed by Tiscareno Associates.

It’s a balancing act that many builders and developers are carefully working to manage. How to increase the usability of the limited space within the city, without losing the spirit of the places we all know and love?

The anchor tenant on the top of Queen Anne hill is the new location for Seattle’s very first Trader Joe’s, which had outgrown its previous Queen Anne location. Although the new building replaced the historic 1920s Elfrieda Building, Tiscareno Associates’ design keeps the character of the building intact while also enhancing the community aspect of the neighborhood.

The LEED silver Queen Anne Towne incorporates a total of 37,000 square feet of retail space, 105 new apartments and two live/work units, one corner of which is fronted by a façade of bricks taken from the original Elfrieda building. The building shape forms around a new 3,500 square foot plaza at street level that is open to the public. The plaza was designed to both celebrate the area’s history and actively draw pedestrians into the space.

This is accomplished by focusing the building’s plaza around a delightful bronze sculpture by Georgia Gerber, the artist famous for the pig at Pike Place Market. The sculpture is a playful, larger puppy with a ball which has already proven to be selfie-central for passers-by of all ages. To reference the rich history the neighborhood was founded upon, the eye is drawn down where pedestrians and shoppers will find themselves standing on artistic renderings of historical scenes and an actual map of the neighborhood that is a part of the plaza’s paving pattern. The “You are here” location on the map is marked by a modern version of a spar pole, a tool used by pioneer logging crews on steep slopes. Past, meet present.

The Seattle Office of Financial Management projects the county’s population will grow to about 2.4 million by 2040. That’s a half-a-million more people over the next 25 years for a city that already feels like it’s bursting at the seams. But grow and build we must, which although cheering news for developers and builders, can cause dismay among long-time residents unused to such a fast pace of change. Creating a new history, even while acknowledging the city’s roots has made Tiscareno Associates’ Queen Anne Towne a welcome addition to our ever-changing city and this growing neighborhood.