At Thornton Place, the Future Comes with a Fork in It [Photo Gallery]

Earlier this week I was up at Northgate, and decided to drop in at the Thornton Place complex for the first time. I've been interested in the area ever since Seattle Public Utilities mounted a restoration project for Thornton Creek, which, fed by over 11 square acres, drains into Lake Washington. In former days, the creek had salmon and trout.

The creek has been daylighted, and its banks are coating themselves with greenery, but Thornton Place remains caught between the future its developers (Stellar and Lorig) hoped for and the recessionary one that appeared.

While apartments are renting, some 20 of the condos, which were not selling like hotcakes in the cooling housing market, developed a settling problem that was announced in early April 2010. Today, the 109 condos sit there, empty, aging, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. They're not Lorig's only problem.

In the meantime, Stellar is still looking for commercial clients for its retail space in the complex--they'd love a brewpub, and are considering hosting a farmer's market. And it's not precisely a ghost town: Regal Thornton Place, notes the Seattle Times, is raking in $17.50 per ticket for Shrek 3-D in IMAX.

But there's no denying the feeling you've stumbled onto the set of Life After People when you walk, all by yourself, down the promenade, to your right a revitalized creek pooling and tumbling over rocks, and to your left bare granite-top counters, one after another. Sooner or later, something's got to give.