Critics of an estimated $400 million plan to redevelop Yesler Terrace, Seattle's last remaining "garden community" of public housing, warned from the start that its low-income residents would be moved away from First Hill and its downtown views to accommodate the private condos and office buildings planned at the site.
For some of the 561 low-income units at the site that the Seattle Housing Authority has promised to replace, it's now official: The agency said last week that it plans to start building Yesler Terrace's first replacement housing in 2013 just east of the current site, on a block bordered by Boren and 12th along East Yesler Way.
The boundaries of the 70-year-old housing project between Boren and Interstate 5 could push farther east into the Central District and, to the south, incorporate Little Saigon as far as Jackson Street if the agency gets a $23 million federal grant that it's applying for. At an Oct. 14 community meeting on the grant application, SHA staff said the agency would use most of the money to pay for 110 new housing units east of Boren and the rest to help drive development in an area that extends to 14th Avenue and the Cherry Hill and Square Park neighborhoods.
A draft Environmental Impact Statement to be released Oct. 20 also shows that the housing authority is not only contemplating office towers but hotels. It's a type of use that community members who've followed the Yesler Terrace planning say they don't recall hearing about before -- at a location, an SHA consultant told the agency's board of directors last week, that environmental data show already has too much noise and air pollution from Boren and I-5 to meet required federal housing standards.
"Much of Yesler Terrace right now is below the acceptable level for noise and air pollution," land use attorney Melody McCutcheon told the SHA board on Oct. 11.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which must approve SHA's plans, can make exceptions, she said, but the housing authority will need to think about mitigation efforts. One example, McCutcheon said, would be to place some of the site's larger buildings along the very edges of Boren and I-5 to act as buffers.
At the low end, the agency says, 1,525 housing units would fit on the site under the current 37-foot height limit. At the high end, one alternative calls for up to 5,000 housing units and 1.2 million square feet of office or hotel space in towers up to 240 feet or 22 stories. Public comment will be taken on the draft EIS at a meeting planned Nov. 30, with a final impact statement due in January. SHA's board is expected to adopt its preferred site plan by March, says Anne Fiske Zuniga, SHA's senior development manager for Yesler Terrace.
Fiske and other housing authority staff told the 14 people who attended the Oct. 14 community meeting that the block east of Boren is now Phase 1 of the Yesler Terrace redevelopment. SHA owns most of the block, which is currently occupied by an abandoned Pizza Time outlet and five buildings with 40 apartments.
The YWCA currently leases the apartments as short-term housing for women and children who have been homeless. SHA plans to use part of the $23 million grant it's applying for through the federal Choice Neighborhoods program to move the YWCA families, tear down their 40 units and the Pizza Time, and build two new low-income buildings of 110 units, SHA Housing Development Manager Tom Eanes said. Of those, 70 would serve the target population for public housing -- those with incomes at or below 30 percent median income, or $18,000. The other 40 would serve people with incomes up to 60 percent of median, or $36,000.
SHA is planning to sell off the north end of the block to a private developer, Eanes said, who's expected to build 84 apartments or condos on the site at or near market rate.
It's the same way SHA has financed its past redevelopments of older public housing projects -- by using federal HOPE VI redevelopment grants and selling off the land it doesn't develop itself to for-profit or nonprofit builders. Commercial towers, however, are new to Yesler Terrace.
The Choice Neighborhoods program is the federal successor to HOPE VI. About $3.5 million of the money, Eanes said, would pay for neighborhood amenities intended to spur development, such as putting in a park and widening sidewalks and planting more trees along 12th Avenue. The agency would also give some of the grant money to Historic Seattle to help renovate Washington Hall, a theater on 14th Avenue.
On the two blocks east of the empty Pizza Time is a county records building that Eanes said the housing authority has been negotiating to buy for some time. SHA has already acquired two apartment buildings in those blocks, one of which, the Baldwin, the agency emptied out and now plans to rehabilitate as part of Yesler Terrace's Phase 1.
The redevelopment across Boren affords the opportunity for some of the housing project's 1,200 residents to stay in the neighborhood during the 15 to 20 years it will take to rebuild Yesler Terrace says Yesler Terrace resident Kristin O'Donnell. "And hotels are moderately less obnoxious than offices," she says. "At least they aren't closed up after 5 o'clock."
There is no current plan for a hotel at Yesler Terrace, says Stephanie Van Dyke, development director for the housing authority. "But that category allows some exploration of broader opportunities for different types of housing," she says, including the possibility of a short-stay hotel for patients at Harborview, medical interns and residents, or nurses on short-term contracts.
"Hotel? Office building?" O'Donnell says. "If you're not going to replace the housing, what's the difference?"