Affordable Housing Projects Could Bring 700 Units to Everett

Apr 11, 2019 In the Community

Two affordable housing projects along Evergreen Way, which could bring more than 700 units to Everett, are working their way through the development process.

Bellevue-based DevCo, LLC is proposing to tear down the former Kmart building at 8102 Evergreen Way to make room for about 400 housing units, according to David Ratliff, a vice president with the company. Along the same road two miles south, a Minnesota-based developer wants to construct 321 apartments for seniors.

On the 9.4-acre Kmart site, DevCo’s early plans call for a five-building complex with heights of five stories on the northern part of the land, Ratliff said. The apartments will be for households making 60 percent of area median income and will include 640 parking spaces.

These plans are preliminary and will change, Ratliff said. The project would likely be the first stage of the development at that location. Groundbreaking would be at least a year off.

“The idea is to push the density north right now before Sound Transit exists,” he said.

Included in the transit agency’s Everett Link Extension is a station at Highway 526 and Evergreen Way. That intersection is next to Kmart and near Evergreen Middle School.

A second stage, probably a decade and a half away, would add more housing to the southern portion of the parcel. With the arrival of light rail, Ratliff said he thinks that in the next phase DevCo will be able to reduce parking requirements and increase density.

The McDonald’s at that location would remain, and so would the DaVita Everett Dialysis Center, he said.

Other DevCo apartments include Axis, in the Lake Stickney area, and Gateway, near Henry M. Jackson High School. And DevCo is set to break ground this spring on a 203-unit affordable housing project on the 1600 block of East Marine View Drive in Everett’s Delta neighborhood.

Further along in the process is senior housing for people 55 and older, proposed by the out-of-state affordable housing developer Dominium. This would be the company’s first project in Everett and the region, according to Jeff Huggett, a vice president for the company.

The need for housing in the region is pretty well known, he said.

“We thought we should take a look and see what we could add to the efforts,” Huggett said.

Click to read more in HeraldNet

Read article in the Tribune