Ten years in the making, a vibrant development combines two of Seattle’s urgent needs—a high-quality early learning center for low-income families and affordable workforce housing—on the site of a former fire station in the Lake City neighborhood.
PROJECT DETAILS
Location: Seattle
Developer: Low Income Housing Institute
Architect: Runberg Architecture Group
Builder: Walsh Construction Co.
Opened: August 2018
Number of units: 70
Unit mix: Studios and one-, two-, and three-bedrooms
Rents: $526 to $1,565
Community stakeholder input was critical to the development process, leading to the ultimate uses for the remaindered fire station site, which was transferred from the city to developer Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) at zero cost.
The Tony Lee—named in honor of a civil rights activist and champion for low-income families, people of color, refugees, and immigrants—includes 70 studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units for households earning 30%, 50%, and 60% of the area median income and a four-classroom preschool operated by the Refugee Women’s Alliance for 80 children from the neighborhood.
Michael Walmsley
Designed by Runberg Architecture Group, The Tony Lee is a cheerful building with pops of blue, green, and red, as well as a continuous dancing yellow ribbon peeling away at the building skin as an expression of play and to break down the overall scale. An 90-by-11-foot salmon mural conveys important themes in the community, such as the Duwamish tribe being the original settlers of Seattle, the many cultures represented in the city, what humans do to the water where the salmon travel, and an homage to the neighborhood’s auto history. In addition, the building is Evergreen Sustainable Development Standard certified, with a green roof and photovoltaic array, and built with acoustics and interior sound comfort in mind being adjacent to a new fire station.
The development utilized a condominium structure to separate the uses and the funding. Critical to the preschool construction was financing from the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning, which administered the funds from a taxpayer-supported 2014 preschool levy. The Tony Lee also was financed with 4% low-income housing tax credit equity, tax-exempt construction bonds, and city funds.
