(Image: Walsh Construction)
A new building with a mix of workforce housing and affordable apartment units will be ready to open in 2024 to join the growing area of development around 23rd and Union.
The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd and Low Income Housing Institute announced their Good Shepherd Housing project is on track for a spring opening on 22nd Ave.
CHS reported here in 2020 on the housing development designed to create new homes for formerly homeless individuals and “low wage workers at risk of displacement from the Central Area.”
The organizations say the seven-story, 86-unit building being developed on church property will have “18 studio apartments for low-wage workers, 66 small efficiency dwelling units for the formerly homeless people, one manager’s unit and a three-bedroom unit with a separate entrance on the ground level that will be occupied by the church’s minister.” The project includes parking for nine vehicles. It is designed by Runberg Architecture Group and Walsh Construction is leading the work to complete the structure.
The new building is rising just west of the market-rate mixed-use building from developer Lake Union Partners that is home to the neighborhood’s PCC grocery.
Developments from Lake Union Partners have been part of rapidly transforming 23rd and Union where the developer has created two projects with a third on the way adding a combined 675 apartment units and more than 40,000 square feet of commercial and restaurant space. Its largest at the corner — Midtown: Public Square — opened last year and has become home to new residents in its mix of market-rate and affordable unit and new Black-owned and neighborhood businesses. The Midtown block will also include a project from Africatown and Community Roots Housing that will create affordable housing and more commercial opportunities. That effort joins the opening of Capitol Hill Housing’s Liberty Bank Building at 24th and Union that opened in 2019 and created 115 new affordable apartment units and street level commercial space.
More housing is coming to the blocks. Black-owned Gardner Global announced an agreement to purchase the Mount Calvary Christian Center properties on 23rd Ave and has plans to develop mixed-use projects on both sides of the street.
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As of yesterday, there is a crane going up on the Calvery church property. This is really happening, good!
This sounds like a good project and it would be great if the city did anything to improve the transit experience in what will be an incredibly dense area with limited parking and lots more housing. It shouldn’t take 45 minutes to go 3 miles on the the 2 downtown because the buses are stuck behind blocks of single occupant drivers.
FYI “workforce” housing is simply a euphemism for market rate housing. Workforce housing means apartments priced for people earning 80-90% Area Median Income (AMI).
There’s so many really high incomes in the greater Seattle area, our AMI turns out ridiculously high. People earning 80-90% AMI can already afford units on the market. And these “workforce” units are priced just barely below market rate effectively keeping the market rate high and not opening the housing stock to people that need it at all.
Most individual low income workers and low income working families will not come close to qualifying for workforce housing. But the developers and investors will all benefit from the tax credits from putting workforce housing under the umbrella of “affordable” housing.
“18 studio apartments for low-wage workers, 66 small efficiency dwelling units for the formerly homeless people, one manager’s unit and a three-bedroom unit with a separate entrance on the ground level that will be occupied by the church’s minister.”
So 66 of the units (~75%) will be affordable housing and 18 of the units (~20%) are workforce housing and likely helping to subsidize the affordable housing some, as well as help with creating a community, rather than a facility for the formerly homeless. Are you saying that these units should just be market-based, or that the whole thing should be affordable?
Seven stories is about three stories too high for that location. There should be a stepping-down from 23rd.