By Mike Lindblom / The Seattle Times
In a few years, up to 167 low-rent apartments will be built at Lynnwood City Center Station, on Sound Transit’s leftover construction land.
The proposed complex, by nonprofit Housing Hope, includes a medical-dental clinic, child care, the Kindred Kitchen public cafe and job training program, and a behavioral health center including youth services. A tiny tributary of fish-passable Scriber Creek, that’s now in a 512-foot-long pipe, will be daylighted and lined with plants and trees.
Sound Transit will sell the 2.4-acre site, appraised at $4.8 million, for the nominal price of $167,000. The land was a temporary parking lot during years of station construction, while an environmental report dubbed its buried stream “Park-N-Ride Creek.”
Housing Hope will develop one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments in eight-story buildings, for households earning 60% or less of area median income. Currently, those levels in Lynnwood are $55,155 yearly for a single person, or $75,660 for a family of four.
The transit board’s Executive Committee unanimously endorsed the deal Thursday morning, to be ratified this week by the full board. Construction could begin by late 2026 if Housing Hope can round up more financing by then.
“Housing Hope is a great provider and partner here in Snohomish County, and this facility is greatly needed, and we’re very grateful to have it coming our way,” said County Executive Dave Somers, a transit board member.
Transactions like these are popular among elected leaders and social justice groups because they not only provide a small refuge from the Seattle region’s housing affordability crisis, but add their tenants into the fold of transit customers.
The state Legislature in 2015, with Sound Transit’s blessing, required that 80% of the agency’s surplus construction lands be dedicated to 80% affordable units for people earning 80% or less of median incomes — the 80-80-80 rule.
As of summer 2024, a total of 3,473 units are complete, being constructed or planned in Sound Transit partnerships, of which 2,673 count as affordable. Amazon pledged $100 million seed money three years ago.
One drawback is the agency forgoes the chance to sell property at market rates, and to defray taxpayer costs of high-capacity transit. Board member Bruce Dammeier, the Pierce County executive, has fretted about leaving dollars on the table in some previous land sales, but he voted yes Thursday without objections.
That’s a bigger quandary in West Seattle. Its proposed 4-mile line stands at $7 billion, while upscale towers on hilltops might command top dollar at Avalon and Alaska Junction stations, if market prices are unleashed in the 2030s. Officials have tossed around buzzwords like “value capture” but haven’t published a coherent strategy to fund stations with real estate profits or taxes.
This month’s Lynnwood deal won’t hinder Sound Transit’s regional finances, said Rebecca Brunn, transit-oriented development project manager. The agency assumes $130 million gross land income through the 2040s, she reported, which already assumed this month’s cheap sale. Some surplus transit lands will sell at market rates.
Meanwhile, a block north of Housing Hope’s piece, private developers have proposed a larger 1,370-unit private development called Northline Village on former strip-mall lands outside Sound Transit’s territory, a short distance from new hotels and apartments in downtown Lynnwood.
Sound Transit’s four-station, $3 billion Northgate-to-Lynnwood extension, which opened Aug. 30, has generated about 20,000 new passengers, for a total of 100,000 average weekday boardings on the entire 33-mile line to downtown and SeaTac.
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