November 2009 | Download & Print PDF | Current Issue | Archive

 My View KIM HERMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

A unique, "inside" perspective on housing and community development from
the executive director of the Washington State Housing Finance Commission

Award-Winning Affordable Housing in Washington State

• INSIDE THIS ISSUE
• Avondale site, Redmond
• Broadway Crossing, Seattle
• Artspace Hiawatha Lofts, Seattle
• Riverwalk Point I & II, Spokane
• Tepeyac Haven, Pasco
• The Wilson Hotel, Anacortes
• More Award-Winning Properties

Broadway Crossing, Seattle

A community housing developer and a national retailer successfully partner on a mixed-use project

AWARDS

Reader's Choice Award, Best Overall Project, Affordable Housing Finance Magazine, 2008; LEED Silver for New Construction, U.S. Green Building Council, 2008; Smart Partnerships Award, to the City of Seattle for Broadway Crossing’s Public/Private Development Project, Governor’s Smart Communities Awards, 2007

PROPERTY DEVELOPER

Capitol Hill Housing and S.E. Grainger Development Group

FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL FUNDING

City of Seattle Housing Levy; Washington State Housing Trust Fund; 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credits; Seattle Housing Authority Holly Park Replacement Program

OTHER FUNDING SOURCES, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

Key Bank construction loan; Impact Capital pre-development loan; Enterprise Community Partners Tax Credit Equity & Green Communities funding; Sound Families Initiative; Washington Community Reinvestment Association; Seattle City Light Built Smart/Built Green & LEED incentive programs

In 2001, Walgreens purchased a piece of property at a busy intersection in Seattle, just east of downtown. On it stood a Chevron station, destined to be demolished. Walgreens, in keeping with its national corporate store development standards, hired a private developer, who hired an architect to design a stand-alone one-story retail building with street-level parking. The next step, required by the City of Seattle, was to take the project to a public neighborhood design review meeting.

Betsy Hunter, Director of Real Estate Development for Capitol Hill Housing and architect Jonathan Hall, Senior Associate at GGLO  Photo: © Tim Matsui / www.timmatsui.com*

Now here’s where the story, as told by Betsy Hunter of Capitol Hill Housing  (CHH), gets interesting. “At the time—this was in 2003—this meeting drew the largest attendance to any public design review meeting in the City’s history,” Betsy describes. “People showed up and said: ‘Are you crazy? This is a six-story development site; it’s a gateway location—at the juxtaposition of two neighborhoods, Capitol Hill and Pike/Pine. This site shouldn’t have surface parking on the lot, it shouldn’t be stand-alone retail, there should be housing above—and, in fact, it should be affordable housing.’”

Betsy, who is director of real estate development for CHH, is quick to credit Walgreens and for-profit developer S.E. Grainger for listening to the community and recognizing the opportunity “to do the right thing.” Under the existing building code, they could have gone ahead with the project as it stood; instead, they went to CHH on the advice of the neighborhood residents who had attended the design review meeting, and began a conversation.

What ultimately emerged from that conversation is Broadway Crossing, which broke ground in 2005 and opened its doors in 2007. Broadway Crossing, at the intersection of Broadway and East Pine, represents a remarkably successful partnership between the private and public sectors on a dense urban site. It makes available 44 affordable apartments to low- and very-low-income families. It incorporates a host of forward-thinking green and sustainable elements in its design. And the redesigned footprint has proved to be a profitable undertaking for the national retailer.

Located across the street from Seattle Central Community College and just east of downtown Seattle, Broadway Crossing consists of 44 affordable apartments—and a Walgreen’s. The middle photo is a view of the rooftop garden for residents.  

“It took a couple of years of working together to understand how this could work, to engage new architects, and go after financing,” Betsy explains. One of the challenges for Walgreens was that this project represented a huge departure from the company’s previous new store developments. For new construction, Walgreens had always built to established corporate standards, and had never built housing on top of its stores.

In the beginning, Walgreens believed that street-level parking needed to be a visible element of the project. “It was tough for them to think that this might be a neighborhood that’s more pedestrian-driven,” Betsy points out. All of these issues made the pre-construction process a complex one, and required “many conversations with the contractors and engineers that Walgreens employs.” In the end, total development costs for the project were $14.4 million; the housing share of that was $10.7 million.

These upper four floors of Broadway Crossing are a model of affordable housing made available in a high-rent neighborhood that greatly needs more options for low-income and disadvantaged residents. All 44 apartments are at 60% of area median income (AMI) or lower; 22 of these are set aside for individuals at or below 30% of AMI. These include nine homes reserved for families transitioning from homelessness and nine for disabled individuals. CHH’s mission as an affordable housing developer and manager extends to serving people with special needs, and its relationships with the Sound Families Initiative, Family Services, and the Lifelong AIDS Alliance have created a network of supportive services available to one-third of Broadway Crossing’s tenants.

Betsy lauds architecture firm GGLO and general contractor Rafn for their immense contributions to Broadway Crossing’s success—in meeting the design challenges, and in their ongoing commitment to this project and others like it. “In terms of green building, GGLO and Rafn have both been increasing their commitment, and becoming experts in the sustainable building field. When we said, ‘How green can we make this building?’ they were right there. We all agreed to pursue the most common-sense green strategies that we could.” These efforts ultimately earned the project a LEED Silver designation. (LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).)

During the development process, key design decisions were made that left the door open to future energy-saving improvements. For example, shafts run from the roof down to the boiler system. “In the future, if it makes sense to put solar panels on the roof, it would be mechanically and technically easy to do it. At the time, the cost-benefit analysis didn’t make sense on this roof and in this location,” Betsy explains.

To GGLO’s credit, she says, “they continue to gather utility data about the building so they can continue to test how well the building is performing. That’s fantastic—we’re not paying them to do this.” Betsy believes that ultimately, the most sustainable aspect of the Broadway Crossing development “was to replace a single-story retail store with a handsome five-story development that has housing over retail. That was by far the smartest thing that could have happened on the site.” Governor Gregoire recognized this accomplishment with a Smart Growth award in 2007.

In fact, with this undertaking, everyone wins. By eliminating street-level parking, Walgreens was able to take advantage of greater square footage in its ground-level store. “My early conversations with the store manager make me believe that they’ve been pretty successful in terms of their sales. That will be the test. It’s going to be about profitability. This location is right across the street from Seattle Central Community College. Because of the pedestrian orientation of the building and the density of the neighborhood, that has really served them well.”

<Previous | Next>

* Seattle-based photographer Tim Matsui works with a diverse array of clients, such as Newsweek, Stern Magazine, Microsoft, Casey Family Programs and, most recently, Seattle custom home remodeler Kellogg Construction, LLC. For his clients he produces reportage, editorial portraiture, and custom multimedia projects; he also reports on complex social and environmental issues such as alternative energy and human trafficking. View his work at http://www.timmatsui.com.