A community groundbreaking ceremony Saturday will mark the start of construction on Africatown Plaza, the 100% affordable mixed-use development set to rise and fill in the southern end of the Midtown Square block with a project from the Africatown Community Land Trust and Community Roots Housing.

“Africatown Plaza will continue a legacy of community building on the site of the former Umoja PEACE Center, the grassroots, Black-led community organization where the Africatown Seattle movement began over a decade ago,” the announcement of Saturday’s event reads.

Africatown Plaza Groundbreaking
Saturday, February 05, 2022
12:00 pm
23rd and Spring

The groundbreaking will be emceed by TraeAnna Holiday and will feature DJ Zeta Barber, Javoeon Byrd of Awodi Drumming, performances of the Black National Anthem and a spoken word piece. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, Representative Kirstin Harris-Talley, Councilman Girmay Zahilay, and leaders on the project are expected to deliver remarks.

The organizations say the planned seven-story mixed use development is an extension of the partnership between Africatown and Community Roots that builds on their previous collaboration in the Liberty Bank Building at 24th and Union which opened four years ago in what many hope will be a model for equitable development in the Central District and Seattle.

Africatown Plaza is “an effort to build another cultural anchor and stem the tide of displacement in the Central District,” the organizations say.

Africatown Plaza will create 126 new units for renters making up to 60% of the Area Median Income. The building will also feature a community room, a public plaza, and “a curated art collection focused on healing, restoring, and celebrating Black and Pan- African communities in Seattle’s Central District.”

The building’s ground floor will provide offices for Africatown’s new headquarters, and an affordable space that will include a commercial kitchen to be used by “local culinary entrepreneurs.”

Africatown also has plans to transform the decommissioned fire station at 23rd and Yesler into a new technology center and is leading the process creating a new “culturally responsive” shelter on the former Keiro property at 17th and Yesler.

CHS reported earlier this week on the for-profit Midtown Center development filling in the rest of the Africatown Plaza block and its centerpiece tenant, the new Arté Noir arts center creating a space to grow “Black art, artists, and culture” at 23rd and Union. The development also has more than 400 new apartment units opening up in a mix of income restricted and market rate price points.

Under the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program and the Multi-Family Tax Exemption Program, the Midtown development is including around 30% — 138 units — affordable housing for households earning between $40,000 and $65,000 per year or 60% to 85% of area-median income.

Counted with the plans for Africatown Plaza, developer Lake Union Partners — which has recently sold some of its holdings in the area — says the new projects on the redeveloped block will net out at 50% affordable. At Midtown Square, prices on the market-rate studio, one, and two bedroom units range from around $2,600 a month for the external-facing one bedroom units to around $2,100 for the smaller studios facing the internal plaza. A 536-square-foot studio part of the MFTE allocation is available to qualified tenants at $1,286 a month.

As part of its acquisition of the Midtown property — a longtime flashpoint in concerns about gentrification and displacement — Lake Union agreed to sell 20% of the block to Forterra, transferring the property into Africatown’s Community Land Trust for development of a 100% affordable project on the south end of the Midtown block.

Saturday, construction of that long awaited project will finally be ready to begin.

Last year, Africatown Community Land Trust CEO Wyking Garrett told CHS what is happening with the commercial mix in Midtown Square and with Lake Union’s property deals in the neighborhood is both illustrative of equity and anti-displacement goals in the area, and proof that more can be done.

“The community definitely wants to wants to see more Black ownership, equity and benefit at this historic epicenter of Black business, culture, community and struggle,” Garrett told CHS. “If properties can be sold to out of state real estate investors why can’t local community have greater stake?”

The land where the building will rise was the scene of a tense standoff in March, 2017 between activists, police, and the King County Sheriff as authorities evicted Wyking Garrett’s father Omari Tahir-Garrett and cleared the UMOJA Peace Center where he lived along E Spring.

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