Artist housing venture before council

A vacant, weedy block in Seattle's Central Area would become affordable lofts for at least 60 artists under a proposal the City Council is expected to approve today.

The project is the latest of several city-property sales aimed at sprucing up a once-blighted area in the Jackson Place neighborhood.

"It was pretty stark and grim," said Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the council's housing committee, referring to an area one block east of Rainier Avenue South and just south of South Dearborn Street, which was once used as an illegal dumping ground.

The proposed artist housing would be the third of five developments to break ground on 3.5 acres assembled by the city. The bulk of the property came into public ownership as part of potential expansion of Interstate 90. Until recently it has sat fallow and overgrown with blackberry bushes.

If all goes according to plans, the 3.5 acres would be enough space for 230 new apartments and condos, and will become a mini-neighborhood some call Jackson Place Village. Already built are Jackson Place Cohousing, a residential cooperative with 27 condos, and The Stellina, a new 34-condo project with units that have sold for $165,000 to $212,000, according to city records.

The artist housing and workspace would be the second Seattle project developed by Artspace, a national nonprofit group based in Minneapolis. Artspace opened 50 subsidized apartments last year in Pioneer Square's Tashiro Kaplan buildings. The units were quickly rented out to a mix of tenants, including families with children.

The group was created to deal with a dilemma in Seattle and other cities: When artists move into inexpensive housing or studio space — often in warehouse districts — they tend to make the areas chic and kick-start a gentrification process that eventually prices them out of their living and working spaces.

That's what happened in Pioneer Square in the 1990s, said Cathryn Vandenbrink, a former jewelry artist-turned-developer and Artspace's regional director in Seattle. Shortly after her husband, painter Michael Fajans, was commissioned in 1999 to do the largest work of his career, a mural for Seattle's new federal courthouse, he was evicted from a 3,000-square-foot studio on First Avenue South, Vandenbrink said. "It was a dire time, especially for artists in Pioneer Square," she said.

The site of Artspace's new project, called the Hiawatha Artist Lofts, doesn't look like a haven for painters, dancers and photographers. It sits between single-family homes scattered to the east and businesses such as Stan's Drive-in restaurant and Bud's Muffler City on Rainier Avenue to the west. But Vandenbrink said the proposed project is near several cultural magnets. The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Pratt Center for Fine Arts and Jackson Street Studios are all within several blocks of the Artspace project at Hiawatha Place South and South Charles Street, she said.

Garfield High School, Washington Middle School and Judkins Park are also within walking distance, making the Hiawatha Artist Lofts well-suited for artists with children, Vandenbrink added. "Not every artist wants to live downtown in a highly urban area," she said.

The Hiawatha project would provide long-term affordable housing for artists. As proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels, the Hiawatha deal would give Artspace a half-block of city land for free if it keeps 60 apartments affordable to artists for 75 years. The land has an appraised value of $1.7 million.

Under the deal, rents would be structured so that one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments would be affordable to artists making less than 60 percent of Seattle's median income.

That translates into a mix of monthly rents ranging from $584 for a one-bedroom unit to no more than $1,200 for a three-bedroom apartment, Vandenbrink said. By the city's calculations, the apartments would be affordable for a single person earning $21,800 a year or a family of four earning $46,700 a year.

The project is budgeted to cost $13 million. Artspace will seek roughly $3 million of that from the $86 million affordable-housing levy approved by Seattle voters in 2002. Vandenbrink said the group would tap other public and private sources for the rest.

City housing director Adrienne Quinn said the Artspace project meets the mayor's goals of continuing the revitalization of the Jackson Place neighborhood, creating affordable housing, and supporting the arts.

It also fits nicely with what local residents said they wanted to see on land that was taken and bulldozed for configurations of I-90 that never materialized.

"It's a perfect match. It adds to the cultural tapestry of the neighborhood," said Paul Byron Crane, president of the Jackson Place Community Council and former chairman of a citizen committee that advised the city on developing the old I-90 parcels.

Crane, a landscape architect, said he is not worried that the new developments will drive up property values in the area. "We want to be gentrified," he said.

Crane chafes at the suggestion that his neighborhood is now blighted. That was true 25 years ago when the government acquired and bulldozed houses for I-90 plans and he bought his house for the cost of a "used Volvo," he said.

But the Artspace development represents the end of a long revitalization period, not the beginning, Crane said. "You can't buy houses in our area now for less than $300,000," he said.

Quinn said the mayor will propose deals during the summer that would sell the last two city-owned parcels in the area to nonprofit housing developers who would build 109 condos. The mayor's staff estimates that 70 percent of those condos will be affordable to Seattleites earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year.

Councilman Rasmussen said he expects the City Council to approve the Artspace deal.

"This project supports economic development, neighborhood development and arts and culture. I see it as a lot of public benefit," he said.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com